On Providence (The Egyptian Tale)

On Providence (The Egyptian Tale)

§ 1

(DE PROVIDENTIA) PREFACE

Tus has been written in the days of the sons of Taurus, and 1209

the first part here presented was read as far as the riddle of the wolf, precisely at the moment when the inferior man was ruling, after coming into power through a division in the state. The § ensuing part was woven into it after the return of the better men, who begged that this history should not remain incomplete amidst misfortunes; but that since those things which were foretold according to God seemed to be in course of fulfilment, it were better in dealing with the same subject to go on to more happy 10 fortunes than those already recounted. From the moment, therefore, in which the overthrow of the tyranny was already in progress, the story followed the sequence of events. And it is worthy of no ordinary wonderment in all this that the handling suffices for many subjects. Many doctrines which up to this 15 moment remained undecided, have found room for investigation in this story, and each has been examined in detail. Lives are described therein which are to be taken as examples of vice and virtue; the narrative contains a history of contemporary events; and this story has been fashioned and embellished throughout 20 with a view to its utility.

PART ONE

1. The legend is Egyptian. The Egyptians are remarkable for their wisdom. Perhaps, therefore, this, which is only a legend, might signify, enigmatically, something more than a legend, for the very reason that it is Egyptian. And if it is not a legend, but 25 sacred history, in that case it would be all the more worthy to be set forth in writing. 2878.2 F

Osiris and Typho were brothers, and came of the same parents. Now the relationship of souls and that of bodies is not one thing and the same. It does not belong to souls to be born on earth from the same parents, but rather to flow from the same fountain. And the nature of the universe furnishes two kinds, one luminous, 5 and the other indistinct, this last gushing forth from the ground, since its source is somewhere below, and leaping out of the earth’s Cavities, if perchance it might so compel the divine law. But the former is suspended from the back of the Heavens;?* for it is indeed sent down that it may order the earthly lot, but it is 10 enjoined upon it that when descending it should take great care

1213 lest, while it is arranging and ordering disarrangement and disorder, it should itself by its propinquity be infected with dishonour and disorder. Now a law of Themis has been established which announces to souls that, whichever one of them has been ac- 15 quainted with the furthest confines of existence and has withal kept guard over its nature and remained inviolate, that such a one, I say, should flow back again by way of the selfsame road, and be commingled with its own source, just as it is a necessity of nature that those who have in some way set out from the other 20 part, should be lodged in the abysses that are akin to them.

‘Envy and Anger there dwell, and there tribes of other misfortunes

Wander about through the gloom in the meadow of infatuation.’?

2. Of souls there are those which are well-born, and those which are ill-born, in such wise that it might befall a Parthian 2s to be related to a Libyan, and that those whom we call brothers should be in no wise near to one another in kinship of soul,

a fact which was indicated in the case of the two Egyptian boys from the moment of their birth, and when they were adult was shown quite clearly. For the younger, born and brought up as by 30

1 Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 247 C. 2 Empedocles, Fragment 121 (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker’, i. (Berl. 1922], p. 269.)

a divine destiny, even in childhood’s days was fond of listening, and fond of fables, for the fable is the child’s treatise on philosophy; and as he grew, he always desired training which was in advance of his years. He gave ear to his father, and whatever wisdom was § known to each, all that he hungered after, eager to seize first upon all knowledge at once, in puppy fashion, as, of course, all natures do which promise great things. Such natures show impatience and start before their time, already pledging themselves to the beloved goal. Then again, long before his adolescence he was even more 10 sedate than a well-bred man of mature age, and he listened with modesty, and when he himself had, on occasion, to speak, whether to ask about what he had been listening to, or with some other purpose, every one would have noticed him hesitating and blushing. He always made way for the older Egyptians, and gave up his 15 Seat to them, and this although he was the son of the ruler of the great kingdom ; and respect for those of his own age was ever with him, for it was pre-eminently in his nature to care for the feelings of men. It was indeed difficult at that period of his life to find a man in Egypt for whom the boy had not obtained at 20 least one benefit from his father. The elder brother, Typho, on the other hand, was, in a word, a downright boor. All knowledge he hated with his whole heart, both so much as was Egyptian, and also foreign learning, teachers of which the king had placed at the disposal of his son 25 Osiris; and he laughed the whole business to scorn, as though it were idle and calculated to enslave the mind. When he saw his brother conducting himself in an orderly way, and leading a modest life, he thought this cowardly, inasmuch as no one saw him striking a man with his fists, attacking him with kicks, or 3orunning in a disorderly fashion, withal that he was nimble, without any spare flesh, and with a body that was a ight burden for the soul therein. Then again, Osiris did not gulp down drink, or give way to peals of vulgar laughter, which shook the whole 1216

body, such as his brother indulged in every day, for Typho deemed these the only acts worthy of a free man, namely to do whatsoever one chanced to desire at a given moment. He was like no one of his race in character, nor indeed like anything human,

and he did not, to put it in a nutshell, even resemble himself, for 5

he was a compound of every kind of evil. At one moment he seemed to be stupid, and a mere cumberer of the ground,’ only keeping from his sleep long enough to fill his belly and to take other provisions for the route of slumber; at another he would neglect the moderate necessities of nature to indulge in gross horse-play, and to annoy his own equals in age and his elders. He admired strength of body as being the ultimate good, but he used it ill, wrenching off doors, throwing clods of earth, and rejoicing if any one was hurt thereby, or if he had done any other mischief, as though this bore witness to his prowess. He flamed up with untimely lust, and was violent in seeking amorous encounters. Further, envy of his brother smouldered within him, and hatred of the Egyptians, because they, the people, gave honour to Osiris, both in speech and in song, and at home in their common religious rites, all, everywhere, prayed of the gods that every sort of good thing might be his. Such was the man and so regarded. Then again, Typho took to himself bands of senseless boys, for no other reason (since it was not his nature to care for any one in his heart) than that he might have some partisans who did not hold the views of Osiris. It was easy enough for any one to win this man’s good graces, and to get from Typho anything that young men desire, by merely whispering something tending to calumniate Osiris. So from childhood did the respective characters of the two foretell the difference of their lives.

3. But just as of two roads the first cleft, diverging only a little, as it advances, ever adds something to the gap, so that finally the

1 Iliad, xviii. 104.

two come to be a vast distance apart ; thus one may see in the case of the young, how a small tendency to differ separates them immensely as they advance in life. Now these lads turned in opposite directions, not little by little, but all at once, each receiving

5 a separate lot, the one the perfection of good, the other the acme of evil. As they grew up the antagonism of their choice grew with them ; more manifest evidences of this were afforded, stamped as they were on their deeds. Osiris from his earliest youth served as a general with those duly gazetted, although the law did not ro yet permit men so young to bear arms, but nevertheless he governed the judgement of his fellow generals, as though he were their intelligence, and made use of them as if they were merely his hands. Then, his nature growing like a plant, he brought forth fruit ever more perfect. He became a commander of the guard, 15 was entrusted with reports, was prefect of the city, president of the council, and gave up each post in far greater repute than that in which he had received it. But the other (Typho), when appointed minister of finance (for his father had thought best to make trial of his sons’ characters in lesser posts), brought shame upon himself,

20 and upon the man who had appointed him, for he was found guilty of embezzling public money, accepting bribes, and of instability in administration. When he was removed accordingly to another position of authority on the chance that he might be fit for it, he behaved still more disgracefully, and of the flourishing kingdom 25 that part over which Typho was placed passed a whole year in unspeakable plight. He then betook himself to other men, and straightway misfortune dogged them. Such was Typho as a leader of men. In private life he danced the cordax, and collected about him the most disorderly of Egyptians and strangers, those who were

30 ready to say and to hear anything, tosubmit to and to do anything, so that his banqueting hall became a factory for every sort of licentiousness. Even when awake he snored, and was delighted when he heard others so doing, thinking this practice a wonderful

sort of music; and there was praise and honour to that one who should prolong the unruly sound, and should spin it out most roundly. And a certain one of these men, the most heroic, was quite lost to shame, and shrinking from none of the infamies, gained many prizes, and certain posts in the government came 5 to him as a reward for his disgraceful effrontery. Such an one was Typho at home.

4. Now when he took his seat in the guise of one who conducts public affairs, he showed clearly that evil takes every form, for it is at war both with virtue and with itself, and both the opposing 10 forces are parts of it. And this gaping idiot straightway became downright mad, and barking more sharply thana Molossian hound, he would bring disasters, one on a private individual, another on a family, or again on a whole city, and he quite rejoiced in having worked a greater evil, as if thinking to wash away the dishonour rs of his indolence at home with the tears of men. One point a man might gain from this evil plight, that oftentimes when on the brink of doing a dreadful thing, or through perversion of judgement he would degenerate into odd suspicions so as toresemble the fanatics, and would bellow forth vigorously about the shadow at Delphi; 20 and meanwhile the person in danger would make his escape without any further mention being made of him: or he would be over- 1220 come by lethargy, and his brain would be fuddled for some time, to such an extent that his mind was far away from his surroundings. Then, when he had pulled himself together, even so all 25 memory of the recent incidents had escaped him, and he would dispute with members of his administration about how many ears of corn a medtmnus contains, or how many cyatht a chous, giving evidence of a rare and amazing shrewdness. Many a time did sleep save a man from misfortune, for it would overtake Typho 30 at a very opportune moment, and would even have pushed him headlong from his throne, had not an attendant dropped his lamp

to support him. Thus oftentimes a tragic night-festival would end in comedy, for he never transacted official business in the daytime, inasmuch as his character was averse to the sun and the light, and more akin to darkness. Though knowing well that every one s who had even a small share of sense accused him of the most complete ignorance, he did not blame himself for his eccentricity, but rather on this very account did he become the common enemy of those who had intelligence, as if they were wronging him in knowing how to pass judgement. The man was without 10 resource in counsel, but most resourceful in plotting. Folly and madness were ever with him, evil destinies of the soul which gain strength from one another. Never have there been, nor shall there ever be in nature other evils greater than these, and more calculated to extirpate the race of man.

15 5. Every one of these things his father beheld and understood, and he watched over the Egyptians, for he was king, priest, and philosopher. The Egyptian writings declare that he was even a god. The Egyptians believe that myriads of gods reigned over them, one at a time, before the land was ruled over by men, and

20 that the kings traced their descent, a Peiromis from a Peiromis.’ When, therefore, divine laws translated the king to the greater gods, and the statutory meeting of the assembly was at hand, the event having been announced in good time, there were gathered for it all the tribes of priests and the territorial army from every

25 city of Egypt. All these came by the compulsion of law, but all the rest of the people might be absent, nor was any one prevented from attending. They were there to watch the voting, though not to vote themselves. Swineherds, however, were forbidden the spectacle, as also whosoever was either a foreigner, or a man of

30 foreign extraction carrying arms as a mercenary in the Egyptian army. These two classes were forbidden to be present. Thus the

1 Cf. Herodotus, ii. 143.

elder of the sons had by far the less number of votes; for Typho’s faction was composed of swineherds and foreigners, a senseless and withal a large crowd. But they submitted to the custom nor attempted anything against the proceedings, deeming their disfranchisement nothing dreadful, but only befitting them, since 5 this decision had been given against them by law, and it was in any case natural to their condition.

6. Now the king is appointed by the Egyptians in the following way. There isa sacred mountain near the great city of Thebes, and just opposite to it another. The Nile flows between the two. Of 10 these mountains the one described as opposite is the Libyan, and on this it is the custom that the candidates for the royal dignity should take their abode during the preparatory period, to the end that they may perceive nothing of the choice. But the sacred mountain is the Egyptian one. On the summit is a tent for the 15 king, and by him are collected as many of the priests as are versed in the great wisdom. This arrangement extends to all that have precedence, for it distributes the positions at the ceremonies according to merit. A first circle is composed of these of which the king is as it were the heart. The soldiers occupy another 20 circle next to this. These then still surround the peak, which on the widely extending mountain is another mount; it is like a nipple standing up, thus keeping the king in full view even of those encircling him at the farthest distance. And they to whom it is permitted to be present at the spectacle, surround him, taking 25 possession of the ground at the base of the nipple. These are they who only applaud what they perceive; the others have authority over the election. As soon as the king has been invoked, and those also to whose office this belongs have moved the whole assembly of priests, as if the divinity were present and were assisting in the 30 proceedings of the election, the name of one of the candidates for the kingdom being then announced, the soldiers raise their

hands, while the priests, the acolytes of the temple, and the interpreters of the oracles register their votes. This is a smaller body of men, but it is far more powerful, for one interpreter’s vote is equivalent to one hundred hands, one priest’s is equivalent s to twenty hands, and the acolyte counts as ten. Then a second name of the candidates for the kingship comes up, and hands and votes are taken for him accordingly. Even if the number on each side is nearly equal, the king, by supporting one side, gives it a much greater majority, and if he throws his weight on ro the losing side, he equalizes the vote. Hence the necessity arises of suspending the election, and depending on the gods, both by watching patiently a still longer time, and by performing the sacred rites with greater precision, until such moment as not through any veil nor by any of the usual signs, but face to face 15 they appoint the king himself, and the people hear the proclamation from the gods themselves. The whole ceremony takes place at one time in one of these ways, and at another time in another, as the case may be. But in regard to Typho and Osiris, the gods were Clearly seen from the first, without any action on the part 2o of the priests, and took part themselves, arranging their own procedure; and each one marshalled his own votaries, so that it was evident to all with what intent they were present. Even if they had not been there, every hand and every vote would have awaited the name of the younger of the king’s sons. But great 2s events here below are announced beforehand by greater preludes, and the divine element is clearly shown in things that are to turn out contrary to all probability, whether they be good or whether they be evil.

7. Osiris therefore remained, as was right, on the spot to which

3o he had been conducted in the first instance. But the other was

in convulsions of impatience, was tormented to know the details

of the election, and finally could not restrain himself from an 2878.3 G

attempt at aggression, and at destruction of the votes. Careless of himself, therefore, and of the royal laws, and launching himself in the stream, he was carried down by it, swimming with the current, the while doing and suffering all manner of things, until finally, derided by all, he lands on the other side of the river. He 5 thought that no one saw him, save only such as he met on the way, and to whom he promised money; but every one recognized him, and detested both him and his design. They did not, however, think fit to expose his misguided nature.

But this was his most calamitous experience, that in his own 10 presence and in his own hearing he was rejected by the votes of all, and by the hands of all; nay, even the gods cast their curse upon him; and Osiris, the one who had not concerned himself about the matter, had merely come when sent for. The gods, the priests, all in a word, bedecked with sacred garlands, and accompanied 15 by the sound of the holy flutes, met him at the bank of the river where the flat-bottomed boat from the Libyan shore, taking the young king on board, must needs touch; and lo, there were great signs from heaven and divine voices of good omen from the same place; and every vision by which the future is sought, great and small, 20 announced a reign prosperous for the Egyptians. So far as the demons of the more evil order appeared likely to be restive, it seemed that they would not meekly endure the happiness of mankind either, but would attack it and cause it to fester; and a kind of plot was indicated. 25

8. Now as soon as he was initiated in the kingly office by the gods and his father, they definitely announced to him, from definite knowledge, besides all the rest, benefits in swarms, but that his brother who had been born to bring ill-luck both upon the Egyptians and on his father’s hearth, must be banished if he 30 were not to throw all things into confusion, to the end that he might neither hear of nor see the success and prosperity of Egypt

that were due to the reign of Osiris himself. For Typho’s nature could endure nothing good. The priests have now transmitted to him (Osiris) knowledge of the double essence of souls as well as the necessary opposition between s those on the earth and those above. These then they begged him to remove and to strip the evil element from its good and divine parallelism, and to be in no wise ashamed before what is called by men blood relationship. And when he showed weakness, they told him that he, and the Egyptians, and their neighbours, and 10 all the country ruled over by the Egyptians must suffer ; for that the evil in question was no slight one, nor would any ordinary care be an adequate means of rebutting and weakening open and secret attacks. The reason was that Typho had allies with him also, a powerful company of those malignant demons to whom he was 15 next of kin, and by whom he had been brought into existence in order that they might be able to make use of an implement of their evil towards men. It was for the sake of this evil, that as they advanced on their way, they engendered, nourished, delivered his mother of, and brought up after their own fashion 20 to be a great boon to themselves,—Typho! One thing more they thought necessary for complete possession, namely to endow him with the power that rule brings with it, for then he would be a perfect man of perfect ancestors, in that he would be both able and willing to do great evils. ‘You, on the other hand,’ said 25 one of the priests, ‘they detest as being a blessing to men and a retribution to themselves ; for the misfortunes of races of men are a feast to the evil demons.’ Again then and very often the priests gave him this warning advice, namely to conduct his brother beyond the frontiers, and to let him go to his ruin in some distant place, 30 for they knew and saw the gentle character of Osiris; but they were finally compelled by him to tell him that for a time he might hold his ground, but that unknowingly he would surrender and utterly betray himself and all men, exchanging in reality the

greatest disasters for the benign name of brotherly affection. ‘Nay as long as you at all events are propitious and helpful,’ replied Osiris, ‘I shall not fear my brother remaining, and I shall be exempt from the wrath of the demons, inasmuch as it is easy for you, if you are willing, wholly to remedy oversights on my part.’ 5

g. But his father taking up the discussion, said: ‘You ill comprehend this matter, my son, for the divine part in the universe is given to things of a different order, acting upon most of them through its primordial power, and filled with intelligible beauty, which is mind. In that region of the universe there is 10 another and supercosmic race of gods, one which, while it holds all existing things together even unto the last ones, is unswerving, and is unrelenting towards matter. That race is a happy vision to those who are gods by nature, but still happier is it to behold its fountain head. And moreover that race is more than full of 15 good elements by force of its self-concentration, being more than filled with itself, but for the others it is well to turn towards the God whois there. The efficacy of these good things is not, however, something simple or of one kind; it is to diverse parts of the universe that they (the gods) direct their care. They must bring 20

1228 down the action generated in their contemplation to the work administered by them, so far as is possible. While therefore, their unsullied element has been drawn up close beneath that great first essence, they themselves marshal those next to them, and the succession of orders descends methodically to the last of existing 25 things, and all things rejoice in the fatherly care of the first element through the agency of the intermediate elements,’ but not, however, to an equal extent, for in that case there would be no degrees. The fact is that, as the existing things descend in degree they become weaker, until finally they err and falsify the order, 30 and at that moment the existence of existing things terminates.

1 Plato, Symposium, 202 B.

Now something of this sort ensues here below. That which is erring in nature gets as its part the last and most perishable portion of nature in generation and of the bodily destiny, but heaven, the highest, the most imperishable portion, has taken 5 possession of the shape of the soul conformable to it. ‘What the gods do on high’, Osiris’ father said, pointing to them, ‘that does the demon in these troublous elements, a nature unstable and rash, and in proportion to the greatness of his distance from there, he understands not the good ordering of divine things. ro Since therefore the foundation of existing things does not suffice to their own salvation (for it slips away itself from beneath them and does not await real being, but merely imitates this by the process of becoming), and since the demons are akin to this earthly nature which has for portion a destructive type of being, it is 1§ necessary for the divine power to turn itself hither, and to implant in us certain initial impulses which the world here follows with profit as long as the impulses suffice. ‘And just as marionettes moved by strings are still agitated even when the man who has given the impulse of motion to the 20 machinery has desisted, but are not agitated for ever (for they hold not the source of motion within them, but move only so long as the force communicated to them is strong and 1s not dissipated by the continuance of the movement), in the same way, my dear Osiris, you must consider that what is well done and divine 25 at once belongs and does not belong to this place, but is sent down from elsewhere. And on this account good souls are hard to find, although such might appear here, and the administrations of the gods, whenever they effect this, are doing things that properly belong to them, but not to the first life. For their happiness is 30 of another sort, inasmuch as the very enjoyment of the first creation brings more happiness than the governance of the inferior, for the one is to turn away from matter, the other to turn towards it. Perchance you have been duly initiated, and have

seen the mystic effigy in the which there are two pairs of eyes, and it must needs be that those below should be closed when those which are above are gazing, and when these two are closed, the former proceed to open in their turn. Now you may consider this as a riddle of contemplation and action, and as signifying that the 5 intermediate deities display their energies in one of these fields at a time, but that in the case of those of the more perfect orders, they use the better most of the time, and are conversant with the inferior only of necessity. These labours also belong to the gods, who carry out the works necessary to the universe, but these are 1o not the leading good things. So even men at one moment more or less guard their possessions, at another give themselves up to philosophy, and in that moment become more like to the divine.

1229 10. ‘Understand then, from this, what I mean.! Do not ask the gods to be seated by you, for they have for their principal rs work contemplation and the first parts of the universe, they who are in heaven and are separated very far from us. Do not imagine that their descent to us costs them no trouble or that it is perpetual. Appointed intervals of time bring them down after the manner of engineers, to give an impulse to a salutary move- 20 ment in a state. And this is the case when they bring harmony into a kingdom, by bringing down here souls akin to their own. This is providence divine and manifold indeed, caring as it does for myriads of human beings through the agency of each single man. Needs must therefore that the gods henceforth devote themselves 25 to their own affairs, while you who are set apart among strangers must remember your origin, and that this is a public duty that you are fulfilling for the universe. You should endeavour to ascend yourself, rather than make the gods descend to you, and you should exercise every foresight for yourself, as if you dwelt 30

1 The opening words in this chapter occur in Pindar, fragment 71 (Christ, ed. 2, Pp. 284).

in a camp in an enemy country, a divine soul amongst demons, who will, it is natural to suppose, being earth-born, attack you, in their anger that any one should maintain foreign institutions within their borders. You must be content therefore to keep 5 awake both by night and by day, having this care alone in your mind, not to be taken by force, one by many, a foreigner by natives of the country. It is true that there is a sacred race of heroes? also in this country who care for the welfare of men, and are able to render both minor services and the highest, a sort of heroic 10 settlement this, whose end is that the world about us may not be bereft of the higher nature ; and theystretch out a helping hand where they have the power; but whenever matter stirs its own offshoots to warfare with the soul, the resistance from the other side is feeble as long as the gods are absent. Each thing is strong 15 in 1ts own domain. Now the demons will desire, first of all, to make the soul their own, and this is the way in which they make the attempt. ‘Itis not possible that any one should exist on this earth without having also a certain irrational part of his soul. This part the 20 Majority of men bring openly to the front, but the sage carries it at his side. Albeit we all must needs possess it. Through this then, as through a kindred force, demons come to the living being by the path of betrayal. What takes place really resembles a siege; it is what happens to coals from firebrands, for they more quickly catch 25 the flame owing to their fitness for fire. So the nature of a demon (one of passions, or rather passion itself living and moving), when it approaches the soul, excites the passion in it, and brings this latent power into action, for it accomplishes each act by its propinquity; and every agitated state comes quite to resemble 3o that which agitates it. In this way demons kindle lust, in this way outbursts of passions and all evils akin to these, associating with the soul through those elements therein which belong to 1 Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 122.

them, and which naturally perceive their presence and are thereby stirred, and grow in power to resist the mind because of them, until they overpower the whole soul, or abandon the capture of it. This is the greatest of struggles; for there is no opportunity, no way of attack, no place that they will relinquish in their on- s slaught, and from quarters where one would not deem it possible, even from these they will make the attempt. Their snares are everywhere, and everywhere their contrivances. All things stir up their intestine warfare until either they take the position or give up the attempt. And from above the gods are spectators of 10 these noble contests; in them you will bear away the crown of victory, and may you gain it in the second contests also! But there is ground for fear that you may win in the one and be defeated in the other. For whenever the divine part of the soul does not accompany the inferior element, but is ever and anon 15 beating it back, and turning towards itself, it is in the course of nature for that element also to become at last hardened so as to resist attacks, and once so armoured, no longer to admit the influxes from the demons.

‘The living being, then, in this way really becomes divine, and 20 a single whole. And this is a heavenly plant growing upon the earth,’ one that has not received any foreign graft, that it may put forth fruit from such, but one that even changes a foreign element to its own nature. So then the demons, giving it up in despair, then and not till then enter whole-heartedly upon the 2; second struggle, and this is to cut the tree down, and to tear it root and branch from the soil, as if it stood in no relation to them. For they are also ashamed of their defeat, if some one of foreign race struts about in their precincts as a conqueror, a trophy of victory real and visible. Such an one brings punishment upon 30 them, not merely in his own person, but also shares in turning away Others from their dominion. Once virtue is zealously pur-

1 Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 90 A.

sued, the evil elements must perforce go to wrack and ruin. For these reasons they plan the destruction of the private citizen and of the ruler alike, in a word of every one who is rebellious to the laws of matter. But you, for in that you are a king, may guard 5 yourself against this more easily than any private individual. They attack by outside means when means within fail them, to wit by war and by rebellion, and by whatever maltreats the body, forces these by which a king will be less easily overcome, one at least who has forethought for himself, since it is impossible to fight ro an adversary in whom force and wisdom are combined, whereas, separated from each other, untutored strength and infirm purpose are easily overcome.

11. ‘You must have admired, my son, the purpose of our fathers as expressed in the sacred images. In the case of Hermes? 1s we Egyptians make the image of the divinity a double one, placing a young man beside an old one, signifying that if any one is to watch over us worthily, he must be both wise and brave, since either of these qualities is ineffectual for good without the other. The same idea is expressed by the Sphinx which is set up 2oin the enclosures before our temples, in force a wild beast, in judgement a man, a sacred symbol of the duality of good qualities. And justly so, for force deprived of prudent leadership is carried capriciously away, mingling and confusing everything ; and intel-

lect is useless for action when unserved by hands. 2s ‘Virtue and fortune scarcely come together except for great purposes, as they have done in your case. Do not therefore importune the gods any longer, you who are able to save yourself by your own resources, if you so desire. It is not well that the gods should always be away from their own spheres, and haunt foreign and 30 inferior places. Take heed lest it be impious to use wrongfully the foundations that have been implanted in us to the end that

1 Assuming d» dropped. 2878.2 H

we should take care of the things upon earth with due order, and in accordance with the cosmic scheme that has been given us. For this is the course of men who make it necessary for the gods to come again, before the appointed time, to busy themselves with affairs here below. At that appointed time, however, when the 5 tuning which they have attuned is becoming unstrung and old, they come back to tighten it again, and as it were to kindle it into flame when it is growing cold. This they do joyfully, for they are fulfilling this service, to use the expression, for the nature of the universe. Otherwise they will only come when this harmony has 10 been destroyed and broken, through the iniquity of those who have taken the charge over, and only when it is possible in no other way to save these things below. A god is not at all disturbed about small things, nor whenever a mistake has been made concerning this or that detail; a tremendous fellow would he be,’ that single man 15 on whose account some member of the happy race should descend here! But whenever the whole order, and the vast elements therein are destroyed, then must the gods come to give the impulse to another dispensation. Let not men be wroth, then, when they suffer from self-inflicted evils, nor accuse the gods of not pro- 20 viding for them, for Providence demands that they in turn should contribute their share. Of a truth, in the place for evils, it is not a matter for wonder that evils should be, but it would be a matter for wonder if anything of a different nature were there. For this last is foreign and even alien, and this is the gift of Providence, which 2. makes it possible for all of us men to be happy in all ways, if we 1236 Will but bestir ourselves and use the gifts which we have therefrom. For Providence is not like the mother of the new-born babe, whose one care it is to scare away what may fly at it and do it harm, inasmuch as her infant is as yet undeveloped and helpless in 30 itself; but resembles that mother who having brought it up and having armed it, bids it use its weapons and ward off evils. Study 1 Plato, Phaedo, 85 D.

this at all times, and consider it as of the highest importance for men to know, for so they will believe in Providence, and will take heed for themselves, and at the same time will be pious and vigilant, nor will they imagine that an intervention of God is diss cordant with the practice of virtue. Farewell! You will, if you are wise, restrain your brother, removing beforehand the fate that overhangs you and the Egyptians, for this is in your power; but if you give way and show weakness, await the gods when it is too late!’

12. When he had finished speaking, he departed, following the

ro Same road as the gods, but Osiris remained, a marvel ill-suited to this earth, one whoat once began striving to banish the forces hostile to the earth, without employing any violence at all. He actually sacrificed to Persuasion, to the Muses and to the Graces, and made all willingly fall in with the law. The gods gave in abundance 1g out of respect for this king, all things, as many as the air bears, and as many as are the gifts of river and land, and all these pleasures he gave up to his people for their joy. He himself left all ease behind him, and preferred to undertake every toil, taking small part in sleep but the greatest in cares; in a word, he took no 20 leisure that all might have leisure. These acts of his accordingly filled all men, whether individuals, households, relations, cities, or entire districts, with benefits, spiritual and material. For he cultivated amongst them a zeal for virtue, making all knowledge and every institution to be so cultivated for this one end, and he as offered rewards to those who were best able to govern men, and to make the governed like themselves. It needs must be that what

is honoured should increase, that what is neglected should come to nought. A love for all education grew up with him,’ the part which partakes of reflection as much as that which partakes of eloquence,

30 and the result of this was that men who excelled in knowledge of this sort could no longer be seen mingled in the common herd, but

1 Plato, Repub. 498 B.

were shining with honours from their sovereign, for they brought with them skill as the handmaiden of wisdom, inasmuch as intellect progresses once it is arrayed in letters. And the better or the worse clothing of the same intellect makes it appear, as in a man’s dress, seemly or unseemly. Early education Osiris thought worthy of 5 honour, for he regarded all education as a fountain-head of virtue, and indeed at this period of all others piety was in fashion among the Egyptians. Such are the good things of the soul, and the Egyptians under the reign of Osiris abounded in them, so that the 1237 country resembled a training school for virtue, a country in the ro which youth looked to one leader, doing the one thing which they saw, and saying the one thing that they heard. He himself was indifferent to wealth, but took every care that there should be enough for all, receiving no gifts himself, but delighting in bestowing them. He furthermore remitted taxes to cities, he gave to those rs men who were in distress; he raised the fallen, and healed that which was likely to fall; one city he enlarged, another he trained to be beautiful; where another was lacking, he added it, another that had been abandoned he helped to people. Of necessity must each man individually profit by benefits which 20 are common to all, but it was no labour for him to condescend even to anxiety for some one individual, and so it came about that no man was seen to weep under his reign; nor was Osiris ignorant of what each man wanted, and what obstacle there was to the happiness of such and such a person. One coveted merited honour, 25 and he gave it to him, and when another, through persistence in the study of books, had no time to gain his livelihood, he accorded to him his meals at the town hall. Another was indifferent to honour from men, and although his possessions gave him quite enough to live on, he was perhaps too shy to take up public 30 functions. Osiris was not unaware of this, but exempted him from public functions, not annoyed by him, but rather causing him annoyance by offering something before he had been asked, and

he demanded out of respect for wisdom that such a man be independent and freed from worldly business, as a sacred animal dedicated to God. In a word no one failed of his deserts except such an one as merited misfortune, and to that man he gave not 5 his expected reward. For he made it a point of honour to conquer the most shameless man by the gentleness of his mind and by kindly deeds. In this way he thought to overcome his brother and his band of conspirators, changing their nature by the abundance of his virtue. But in this one thing he was wanting in judgement, 10 for malignity not assuaged by virtue is rather inflamed by it. If to cling to the good is natural, to the extent that good increases, the grief occasioned by it increases also, and this is precisely what the deeply groaning brother suffered over the reign of Osiris.

13. As soon as Osiris had taken over the rule, Typho narrowly

15 escaped death from dashing his wicked head on the ground, and knocking it against columns. For whole days he got himself no food, although a most gluttonous man; he rejected drink, although very fond of wine; although he loved sleep, he continued without sleeping, and he was afflicted with wakefulness, though many 20 attempts were made to conjure it away. And although he purposely closed his eyes that his soul might be free from the stings of memory, yet memory is most contentious to any one who desires to set it aside, so that the image of his evils was with him even when his eyes were closed, and if sleep ever by chance overtook 25 him, he would fare still more wretchedly in dreams, seeing that hill before his eyes, those votes, all those hands raised for his brother; and even when he would have been glad to arise for hatred of the cruel sight, his ears would hum for long with the din of the cheering throng. Nor could he endure to remain at rest, 30 for his soul was distressed, and if he looked out of his house, a succession of misfortunes met him, showing themselves in the words, behaviour, and songs of the multitude. It was always

‘Osiris, how fair to behold, how wise in speech is the young king’, and of his high spirit that it was not boastful, and of his gentleness that it was not abased. He would return home then and lock himself in, not knowing what to do with his life; no more did his wife, she, another immense evil, her own tirewoman, greedy 5 of the theatre and the market-place, believing, as she wished, that the eyes of all were turned upon her. On this account she deemed that her husband’s fall from the royal position was an even greater misfortune for herself, thinking that in the alternative case she would confiscate the freedom of the state on a large 10 scale and waste its resources on luxury. Now Typho was already of mature years when he fell a victim to her, like a youth in the initial stages of passion, and the half of his misfortune lay in the shame that he felt before the creature to whom he had expressed his ambition to rule in the highest position, sharing the power 15 with her. And she, in her private life also was a most wonderful being, seeking to shine in the most opposite ways, most feminine of women, on the one hand, in seeking a fresh adornment, in adding to her beauty, and in yielding to her nature ; most venturesome, on the other hand, in tampering with men’s affairs and in 20 carrying them out, busying herself about a variety of things and being an innovator besides. With these and other ends in view, she had got ready both women of perverse morals and pimps, all of like dispositions, to keep for the gratification of her own tastes both at home and abroad. 25 But as for Osiris, only the fact that his son was seen by men reminded the world that there were women’s apartments in his house, and even his child Horus was seldom visible. For the one virtue of a woman Osiris thought was that neither her person nor her name should pass the door of the court- 30 yard. Accordingly, her rise to the pinnacle of fortune did not avert this chaste wife of his from the even tenor of her way; she was apt to be the more retiring owing to the greatness of

her rank. Nor did he himself rejoice as one more happy on account of this elevation, for he knew that even had he not attained it, he would not have been any the less happy, inasmuch as each man, once that he wills to be virtuous, is himself steward 5 to himself of such happiness. Therefore of such as dwell with virtue, whether private individuals or rulers, one may observe men equally gay at heart. Every life indeed is material for virtue; just as with the tragic actors whom we see on the stage, whosoever has trained his voice well, will take the parts of ro Creon and Telephus with equal skill, and in no way will robes of purple be superior to rags, so far as the volume and beauty of his declamation are concerned, or his success in bringing down the house by the sound of his strains. He will portray the handmaiden and her mistress alike with the same power of cadence, 15 and whatever mask he puts on, the manager of the theatre demands of him that he use it aright. In like manner God and Fortune bestow upon us lives, as it were masks in the great drama of the universe, and no better or worse is one life than another; but each man makes such use of it as best he may. The earnest zo Man can everywhere succeed in life, whether he act the pauper or king. As to the mask, it makes no difference. Surely the tragic actor would become ridiculous who shunned one mask and seized upon another. Even in the réle of the old woman, if he shines in his art, he is crowned and heralded abroad, while if he disgraces 25 himself in the réle of a king, he is hooted and hissed, and on occasion is even stoned. For no life is really our own, rather are we clad without with the lives of others, and we, the better and the worse of us when we act and reveal the inner voice, are actors of living drama. These lives, then, we have only to put on and 30 take off, as garments.

14. Osiris then (for he had been taught what the difference was between meum and tuum), knew that the soul is the measure of

happiness. Undaunted therefore by outside forces, he succeeded in making himself and those of his household of the same way of thinking, both private individuals and rulers. But the others,— because they lived by the senses, and were devoid of reason,— were careless lovers of fortune, and considered the property of 5 others their own; they were impregnated with vanity, they hankered after the kingdom, and, as it did not come to them, despaired of themselves, and thought that nothing was worth living for. Again and many a time the fact is worth repeating to men, that it is a sign of ill-breeding not to await life patiently, 10 as a portion to be served at the dinner table, which in due course comes to us, that we may help ourselves, but to be one’s self the one to pounce upon it beforehand, and to filch it away. A man who succeeds in this will be laughed at, for he is an unseemly fellow-guest, and will be detested by the master of the feast, 15 inasmuch as he disturbs its decorum, as far as in him lies, by his meanness. On the other hand, if he fails, he will go so far as to weep in childhood’s way, himself clinging to the portion that has been carried past and has gone to his neighbour. Such in all respects was the experience that befell Typho, for he was hated by 20 the gods, he himself was lamenting, and the matter was the laughing-stock of the people.

For not even the fact that he had taken to his bed for many months, and was daily expected to die, not even did this arouse pity, but stirred up anger amongst men of sterner, and laughter among 25 men of gentler judgement, to such a point that the matter was by this time proverbial, and the question addressed to pale people was this, ‘Has not your brother had a piece of good luck?’ He might have perished justly by his own hand, so given up was he to evil.

1245 But at this point his execrable wife, very much a woman even 30 in the midst of dangers, retrieved both herself and him, always managing him as one easy to control; she deterred him from weeping by occupying him with herself, banishing passion by

passion and fencing off pain by pleasure. In this way he then recovered himself with an effort, yielding in a measure to evils the most hostile. At one moment he would lament, at another he would give way to anger. And licentious boys at such times, even in s greater numbers, entered his house the more, bringing in their train carousals and drinking bouts, all this that he might kill time in their company and assuage his soul’s gloom.’ Other things also they devised, that they might have as little leisure as possible to remember the good fortune of Osiris. They con- 10 Structed swimming-ponds, in these ponds islands, and in the islands artificial hot baths, that men might strip themselves one after another amongst women and satisfy passion without restraint.

15. While they are engaged in these affairs, the idea of seizing the kingdom comes into their minds, at the suggestion of 15 evil demons who show the way, and already they were for openly administering everything else, being on the spot and making tours together. It was intolerable to these demons to see their own schemes going to ruin and dishonour, prudence exercised, and piety gaining ground, injustice driven away, harmony estab- 20 lished, and all good things flourishing. To the Egyptians weeping was now only a word. All things were propitious, all things in order. The state, like a single living organism, had law for its soul, and was moved by this, its parts the while harmonizing with the whole. These things goad the demons to madness, to these they 25 Cleave, employing as their instruments men akin to them. The evil is hatched in the women’s quarters in two houses. There was indeed a hearth in the royal city belonging to the commander of the foreign troops, one whom it seemed good to the Egyptians

to send upon a campaign, himself and his forces. 30 At the moment in fact they were waging an unsuccessful war against a section of their own country which had revolted, and

1 Plato, Alcibiades, ii, 150 D f. 2878.2 I

several Egyptian villages had fared ill, for the demons had prepared this trouble for their drama. Typho’s wife, that crafty ape-like creature, visiting the wife of this very man day and night, convinced without difficulty that old woman, a foreigner and unintelligent, that she held her in great regard, and foresaw a misfortune 5 which would befall them if affairs turned out as Osiris wished. ‘For’, said she, ‘he makes a charge of betrayal, and thinks it is a war already arranged in which he is engaged, since the foreigners have 1248 divided their ariny, although their policy is unanimous. He has therefore decided,’ she said, ‘to bring back the general by every 10 violence and contrivance, and as soon as he is away from the camp, to ruin him completely, by relieving him of his command, as well as you, and yourchildren. This noble offspring of yours, yes, these most lovely nurselings, even these he has decided to slaughter, while still in their youth.’ And meantime she would weep, touching the 15 young children lightly under the chin, and winning their goodwill by the pity she showed. At this the old Scythian woman straightway wailed aloud, thinking to see these horrors before her eyes, and to suffer them herself. But the other woman added still another terror, and every day one more, announcing, forsooth, plans of 20 secret machination against themselves. The Scythians were to be destroyed root and branch out of the land, and for this Osiris was working every day ; he was secretly bringing the battalions up to their strength, and was making all other arrangements for the Egyptians to live by themselves, once they had either butchered 25 the foreigners or driven them out. This would be quite easy, as soon as he had proclaimed their general a private citizen, by serving him with a notification of his dismissal, and had brought him up for impeachment by the law. And when the general had been thus disposed of, he thinks that the others will involve little trouble. 30 ‘Now,’ she continued, ‘Typho is weeping at home, for he has your interest at heart, and he has always supported the foreigners politically, albeit through them we actually lost the kingdom, for

they had not arrived on the scene at the moment when the result was announced. Had they done so, it would have now been possible for you to insult the Egyptians, to possess yourself of their goods, and to treat these masters of yours as slaves. But sas then we were not aided by you, so now we are powerless to come to your rescue. None the less, when disasters approach our friends, it is we who suffer misfortune.’ When she had thus outwitted the old woman by her maneuvres, and had driven her into the last degree of panic, in the belief 10 that there was no way of escape for them; now that she had enough of this, she applied another device to recall the foreigner from her terror, seeing that she had already learned to follow the one who had caused her judgement to waver as she pleased. So, little by little, she infused courage into her and filled her with hope. 15 ‘Great is the plan,’ she said, ‘and one that requires fresh courage, to the end that we may not be under the power of Osiris, and live or not live when he pleases.’ At first she hinted darkly at the insurrection, then made insinuations about it, and at last revealed it, gradually accustoming her to the story and the 2o enterprise, until finally she made the timid creature bold, by showing her that the power of Osiris was as nothing if once they were determined. ‘For the law,’ she said, ‘and the habit of honour, and the ancient and ancestral tradition, enslave the slothful of their own free will. But he who rebels is only making 25 trial of the weak, and that man is free who has strength, if he is not dumbfounded before habit, and we shall never experience that, as long as you are under arms, and Osiris does nothing else but pray to the gods, at one time giving audiences to embassies, at another stating judicial decisions, and at another engaging in some 3o other task of peace. For Osiris will never be an evil to any of the Scythians, if we combine with you, and contribute, for our part, the prestige of rank, for yours, the military strength. Nor will you appear to be committing any great fraud, or to be disturbing

the peace of the Egyptians, or to be changing the constitution, but rather to be establishing it, and making better arrangements 1249 for every one, if you secure the rule for Typho, born of the same stock as Osiris, the eldest to boot, and a more legitimate sovereign to govern Egypt. Thus in the first place it is not even likely that ; the Egyptians would combine against you, inasmuch as the change in regard to the hereditary constitution is not a great one. While the outward form of the government will be ours, the benefits of it will be yours, and youcan batten on the whole of Egypt as if it were your own dinner table. Only promise to persuade your husband.’ 10 ‘And you’, said the other, ‘will join in persuading him.’ This they set about doing, and when the commander was announced to be approaching on horseback, scouts suborned thereto spread rumours secretly about the plot, and under a mask of discretion succeeded in announcing what they were pretending to conceal, more clearly 15 than those who shout loudly, and mysterious letters troubled people profoundly, letters enjoining them to secure their own safety. Finally some one said quite openly that they must save themselves from the ambush, and another would repeat this still more clearly, and then another, and again another, all these partisans of Typho 20 and confederates of the women. The finishing touch now comes, the women meet him, they the artificers of the plot, and Typho himself, as if he had gone out of town on some other errand, joins the commander secretly, and confers with him concerning the kingdom. He persuades him to undertake this work imme- 25 diately, and if necessary to let the regal city perish with Osiris, adding that the rest of Egypt was sufficient for him. ‘And at the same time’, he says, ‘your soldiers may enrich themselves by enslaving the prosperous city, the common hearth of all the conspicuous Egyptians, and by plundering its wealth.’ So our worthy 30 Typho sacrificed this city to his hatred of its inhabitants because of their goodwill towards Osiris. This the Scythian refused to do, for he felt in awe of the sacred senate, and of the well-disciplined

people, and of the privileges that the city conferred. He said that he was marching against Osiris not of his own free will, but of necessity, and that if he succeeded in overcoming him, consistently with the safety of the city and the preservation of the country,

she would regard it as a point gained, that the necessity for a greater evil had not arisen.

16. The story refuses to linger over the sorrows of Osiris, for it is not in nature for a man to persist complacently in a harrowing recital. From that time till now the days of the sacred tears are

ro accounted as ill-omened, and any who have the hallowed privilege of beholding may see images of these personages moving miraculously. But ’tis said this much is lawful for every one to hear, how that Osiris for country, for temples, for laws, gave himself up to men threatening to destroy all unless they capture him; that he rs crossed the river in a cargo boat, and a guard was straightway put over him wherever he might be on land or sea, and a foreign assembly to decide what punishment he should suffer. Before this assembly Typho demanded that he should die as quickly and as brutally as possible. But the foreigners, although they considered 20 themselves wronged, were indignant at this, and showed respect for virtue. They were for condemning him to exile; then they felt shame at this solution, and decided that it should not be a case of exile for him, but a voluntary withdrawal from the country. They allowed him to keep his money and property, although 2s even these Typho had offered them for their own. They would no more touch them than the treasures of the temples. So he was sent on his way escorted by the god and goodly heroes, that he might leave the country at an appointed time, for it was not fated that the evil elements should triumph in Egypt, and that every- 30 thing should so quickly fall into disorder and shame, as long as a holy soul dwelt there. That these evils might take place, the demons to whom such works belonged had in the beginning

combined against him, and their own servant whom they had first brought into being, and quite recently into the position of tyrant, was now regaling them with all sorts of misfortune. Taxes of every sort, manifold in number, were at once imposed upon the cities, obligations that had no existence were discovered, and debts that had become a dead letter were dug up anew. The river-dweller was compelled to take over some public work on the land, and boats were demanded from the land-dweller, so that no human being might have leisure in which to be happy. These were the most public forms of abuses, and there was another more common still. Typho would send men under his own control to govern tribes, corrupt wretches to whom he sold the cities openly. Now as to those who purchased the right to govern any tribe: however young a man might be, although the lease of the district was signed for one year only, he counted on being able to acquire in that year supplies for a dissolute old age. This is a specimen of the sort of thing that happened in Typho’s reign. By written contract he agreed upon the period of their rule for those who paid him down the price.

Formerly a man was turned out of office for cause of misconduct, whereas to another the reward of virtue was still a more distinguished honour, namely the rule over a greater number of men, and a longer tenure of his post. But from this time on there was wailing everywhere from all, every man having a personal grievance to tell of, and throughout cities and town councils men were harried with every kind of ill-treatment ; so that one cry alone rose from Egypt to heaven, the sound of a universal dirge. But the gods took pity on the race and prepared to come to its rescue. It did not seem good to them, however, to do so, before virtue and evil-doing had been still more clearly compared with each other, to the end that even men who used their minds and perceptions only a little might clearly distinguish the better from the worse, might pursue the one and eschew the other.

17. Typho was even now setting himself to eradicate in every way the memory of Osiris’ rule from the minds of men, and he pursued this end in many other ways, not least in the following. He caused cases already settled to be tried over again, and it was

§ inevitable that he who had been convicted should win the case. Again, he gave supplementary instructions to embassies in which he who had profited by the divine tongue of Osiris was an enemy, and that man must needs dwell with misfortune, himself, as also his city and his race. But, when in difficulties, there

1o were two ways of dealing with Typho. One was, for any man to count out money to his wife. She was throning it conspicuously as on a housetop, employing dissolute courtesans to attend to her person and business affairs, and made what had of old been called by the Egyptians the court of justice,

15 into a sale-room for lawsuits. One who had been picked out in this wise would always find Typho merciful, for he was not only tame and amenable to the women’s side of the house, but moreover he felt gratitude to them for having gained him his kingdom. This then was one method in the face of difficulties for those who

20 found him difficult to manage, and there was another, namely to approach any individual of the pernicious band of Typho’s booncompanions. They were called the great and the happy, these miserable and counterfeit specimens of humanity. The way then was to approach them, and to launch some cunningly contrived

25 squib at Osiris’ head. The people who did this were those who cared least for virtue, and who were not ashamed to make profit from any source whatever. Thus they changed in fortune as they changed in opinion, for the witticism would reach the tyrant’s palace and would be famously received at his table. He was all

3o favour to those who favoured him. First one and then another would do this, and they benefited by it. But they knew that they were hated by the gods, and by men that were upright. The greater number, however, suffered in silence.

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18. Now it happened that there was one man who, though of serious bent, had yet through philosophy been brought up in a more rustic mould, and had nothing in common with the ways of the city. This man had received, as all men had, very many kindnesses from Osiris; for himself exemption from public services, and for s his country lighter services to that man (Osiris). And while innumerable men were making verses at that moment, writing speeches in praise of Osiris, and rendering favours to him in return for favours, he was quite as generously disposed as they, and the more so in that he was more capable, and composed, wrote, 10 and sang to the lyre in the Dorian manner, which alone he thought had room for depth of character and of expression. These poems he did not give to the public, but if there was any listener in the audience who could understand virile phrases, any one unable to endure the tickling of pleasure, but of open mind, to that one 15 he would address his words. On the one hand he knew that Osiris was an exceptionally acute critic of writings, whether ephemeral or lasting, and on the other hand he refrained from saying anything about Osiris in his presence, partly because he did not regard word as a fitting and equal return for deed, and partly 20 that owing to the rusticity in which he had been brought up, he was ashamed to be thought a flatterer. But when Typho seized Egypt by force and tyrannized over it, then this man became more uncourtly still; then he published, then he disclosed his works,

1256 While all shuddered at the hearing; he thought it impious not to 2-5 declare openly his hatred of those who had done evil to their benefactor. Then he invoked the most sanguinary curses upon Typho both in speech and writing, and he who had always been found fault with for his habit of silence became quite garrulous, whether at home or in the forum. 30

Osiris was everywhere in his discourses, everywhere in social gatherings at which he was present were the praises of Osiris sung, and in the teeth of those who could not endure them he flung his

tales, nor did he pay any respect to his elders or friends, who admonished him, nor again did fear of his impetuosity disturb him, and he seemed like one mad with some noble madness. He did not desist until he had stood as near as possible to Typho himself,

s when distinguished men from all parts were gathered about him, and had pronounced a long speech of praises of his brother and had counselled him to emulate a virtue, so closely becoming him. Typho fired up and was manifestly stung to the quick, but out of respect for the assembled company, he withheld his hands 10 and was prudent of necessity. It was possible, however, to fathom his state of mind by his face, for this passed through various stages of passion. Thus in a short space of time he turned all the colours of the rainbow. He became forthwith more hateful, and went further to the bad; the good conditions that existed under Osiris

15 had disappeared, and he worked other evils besides, harassing the cities for which Osiris had pleaded, and devising some personal evil against him, so that he might never be able to return home in freedom, and would be forced to dwell bewailing his lot, and seeing in prosperity those by whom he was hated. While the stranger is 20 in this plight a god gives him new strength, one clearly visible, and bidding him to endure to the end. ‘For not in a period of years, but only of months,’ he said, ‘is the sceptre of Egypt destined to lift up the claws of the wild beasts, and to abase the crests of the sacred birds.’ A cryptic allegory this; and while the stranger 2s recognized the picture as that engraved on obelisks and sacred enclosures, the god imparted to him the understanding of the hieroglyphics, and gave him a token of the time implied. ‘Whenever’, he said, ‘those who are now in power shall attempt to introduce innovations in our religious rites, then expect that in 3o a short time the Giants (by which he meant the foreigners) shall be cast out, themselves pursued with furies, and if some discord still remains, and if everything is not effaced at once, and if Typho himself remain still in the royal palace, despair not even then of

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the gods. Here is another token for you,—whenever we shall purify the air encircling the earth by water and fire, that air tainted by the breath of the ungodly, then shall Justice come even upon those who are left, and straightway expect then the better dispensation after the removal of Typho. For porten- 5 tous things of this sort we disperse, burning them with lightning and shattering them with thunder.’ Then indeed what had been harsh in the past, seemed to the stranger of good augury, and he was no longer distressed at his enforced stay, for through that alone he was to be an eyewitness of the intervention of the gods. For ro it was not even in the range of human conjecture that a compact force under arms, and allowed by law in time of peace to carry the sword, should be routed without even an opponent. These 1257 things he reasoned about, how they might be, but they seemed to surpass reason. Now, when a short time had elapsed, there was 15 a question of a certain evil stamp of religious observance, and a counterfeit of ritual as in the case of coinage, which an old law banishes from the cities, shutting out the impiety beyond the walls. Typho set himself to introduce this through the instrumentality of the foreigners, for he did not dare to do so in person 20 through fear of the Egyptian populace, and sought to make a gift of a temple in the city, breaking the laws of his ancestors. At this moment the stranger began to think that this was what was meant by that prophecy of the god, ‘and,’ he reflected, ‘I shall probably now behold what is to follow.’ Having learned this then, he 2s awaited on the one hand the immediate fortunes of Osiris, on the other the years that had not yet come, when his son Horus should think of choosing an alliance with the wolf instead of one with the lion.’ Now who the wolf is, pertains to a story which is sacred, and it would be an unholy act to declare it to the 30 world even in the dress of a fable.

1 Cf. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 358 c.

PART TWO

1. From this point the actions of the gods begin to be manifest, for all things were now full of all manner of evils from every quarter, and a belief in Providence had disappeared from the mind of men, their impious conjectures being largely sustained by the

s events witnessed. On the one hand no human agency appeared anywhere to assist them, for the foreigners were using the city as

a camp; on the other hand, the commander of these was stricken with terror during the night, the Corybantes, I suppose, attacking him, and by day panic uproars took possession of the troops. The ro frequent occurrence of this reduces them to a state of frenzy and causes them to lose their wits. They wandered about, alone or in company, all as if possessed by the nymphs’ delirium, at one moment attempting to draw their swords, and behaving as about to deliver an immediate attack, at another, on the contrary, 1§ claiming pity and asking to be spared; or again, springing up, they seemed alternately like pursuers and pursued, as though some hostile force had been secretly conveyed into the town. But in the city there was neither weapon, nor any man to use it; the people were an easy prey offered up by Typho. So this also is very 20 Clear, that a god is needed even by those well prepared for war, unless their preparations are to turn out useless, and that victory

is from no other source: at the same time one deprives the victorious cause of its due in foolishly supposing it to be probable that the better prepared man will win. For when our 25 plans turn out to be successful, a god seems to us superfluous, and disputes the honour of a victory that was already prepared by ourselves. But if no one intervenes to produce the result, and

if the unseen alone is responsible, we hold nothing short of a refutation, not stated in words, but in evident fact, of the views of those 30 who disbelieve that the gods care for mankind. Now something of this actually took place on that occasion. Here were the bold,

the conquerors, the mail-clad, whose whole work and play alike were a training for war and battle, the cavalry parading in the market-place in order, or moving off in squadrons at the sound of the trumpet. If any soldier was in need of a huckster, or a cobbler, or wished to polish his sword, all kept guard over the need of 5 each, so that the phalanx might not be dispersed even in the streets. Then lo! these men stampeded in mad flight from the lightly clad, the unarmed, from men cast down in spirit, and not even praying for victory. At a signal known to all of them, they retired from the town suddenly, secretly taking their children, their wives, their 10 valuables, as though it were not quite possible for them openly to enslave those of the Egyptians as well. When the population saw them packing up this baggage, they did not even then understand what was happening, they only despaired for themselves the more. And sosome of them shut themselves up in their 15 houses, there toawait the conflagration ; while others preferring the sword to fire, purchased a lighter implement of death, not for any use, but that they might offer themselves for slaughter when the moment should come. Others attempted to take to their boats, and their minds ran on islands, on villages, and on cities beyond 20 the frontiers ; for any spot at that time seemed more secure than great Thebes, in which the Egyptian palaces had been constructed. But how gradually and with difficulty the gods brought them round to a state of confidence in events and of renewed courage to prefer safety,—this very incredible story has come to our ears. 25

z. A poor woman and very old at that, plied a trade near one of the side gates of the city, not a lucrative trade, but withal necessary for her, namely that of stretching out her hands on the chance that some one might put an obol therein. She had come very early to her vagabond’s station, for life’s needs are skilled in cheat- 30 ing nature of its sleep. Once seated, she did the proper thing. She speeded on their way with her blessings those who had roused

themselves to their work, she brought good news of the day, she prayed, and promised that the god would be propitious. Now when she saw from afar what was being done by the Scythians, as soon as it was broad daylight, and how they did not cease

gs running out and in like thieves, all of them packing and removing their belongings, she takes it to heart that this is the last sun that Thebes will look upon, for she thought they were doing this that the city might hold no pledge from them, so that when they had once moved their camp, they might begin an assault, having no ro fear about the prospect of further gain, since the wrongdoers share the hearths of the wronged. So, upsetting the cup’ in which she collected her coins, with many bitter lamentations and appeals to heaven, ‘You’, she said, “when turned out of your own country, and when wanderers, Egypt received as suppliants. Moreover she

rs treated you not merely as it were well to treat suppliants, but she gave you the honour of citizenship, and made you share in its privileges, and, to crown all, made you masters of the situation. Now even native-born Egyptians are adopting Scythian manners, their affectation of these being actually conducive to their 20 interests. Your very ways are held in greater honour than our own. What then does all this mean? why are you moving your camp, why are you packing up, and removing your possessions ?

I suppose the gods are not trying you for ingratitude on account of your present conduct to your benefactors; yet they exist, and 25 will come on the scene even if it be after the downfall of Thebes.’ When she had finished, she threw herself face downwards on the ground. Thereupon a Scythian made for her with drawn sword, as though to strike off the poor creature’s head, for he surmised that she was abusing them, and was making their night’s work 30 public, imagining that their action was still unobserved, since none of those who had been spectators had dared to denounce them.

1 Notice that the cup is Spartan; the «ww» was a Lacedaemonian drinking vessel used by the soldiers.

She therefore would have become the victim of the sword. But some one appears now, whether a god or a divine personage (at all events he seemed a man), whowas evidently indignant, and turning the Scythian against himself, he meets his onset, and anticipating his blow, gathers him up and hurls him on the ground. Another Scythian then attacked him, and quickly met with the same fate. Then a hue and cry went up and men rushed to the spot. There were many foreigners, on the one hand, who, leaving the baggage animals, were caught by the incident at the gate. They were either about to go or already had gone out, and returned to help their own people as quickly as possible; on the other hand there was a great concourse of the natives. One of them is struck down and dies, another kills a Scythian, and again still another Scythian the slayer; a man falls at every moment, and at every moment a man kills another on either side. To the people anything at hand was the arm needed ; they were able also by despoiling the dead and by robbing the living to make use of their swords; they were superior in numbers to the aliens, for part of these were encamped as far as possible from the town, that they might have less reason to fear an ambush, with which, though it did not really exist, the god threatened them, that they might leave the city, the heart of which they held in their hands; and another part of them, inferior in number to the civil population, were busying themselves over their goods and chattels to the end that nothing should be left behind. Far more numerous therefore, as they were, they were brought into collision with those less in number than themselves who encountered them near the gates, and those who were continually coming to the place to effect an exit. The noise grew louder, and now the action of the gods could be clearly distinguished there. For when a perception of the uproar broke over the whole extent of the city, and had reached to the camp of the aliens, since each faction had long been in fear of an attack from the other, every man of the townsfolk, thinking that now

had come the decisive day for Egypt, one in which the foreigner had agreed to throw aside all decency, every man of them determined to die in action, and to make a monument of his valour, since not even a god would have seemed to them a trustworthy

5 guarantee that they should not suffer. All invariably, therefore, broke through to the centre of disturbance, each man wishing to distinguish himself, and esteeming that it would profit him if he braved all dangers while witnesses were still alive. The foreigners on the other hand had concealed their departure, and thinking 1o that they had been discovered, took little heed of those left behind in the city, although they made up about a fifth part of their army. Fearing only for themselves, lest their enemies should make a sortie, they took to flight, and encamped farther away, only too thankful that they had been saved with the greater

15 part of their force instead of having to confront danger with the whole. But of the residue left behind, those in the houses, through being for long divinely infatuated, and filled with suspicion that the Scythians would suffer an intolerable disaster at the hands of the Egyptians, supposed that an attack had been made upon zo them, in their retreat, as on fugitives, and that soon their camp would be plundered. They thought then that it would be to their own advantage to remain on the spot and lay aside their arms, taking the place of suppliants, since then it would seem that they also had been the only ones left behind, because they had 25 done no evil to the Egyptians, whereas the others had left the town, fearing to suffer for the acts they had committed. But those alone who happened to be near the gates and around whom the panic was in full blast, knew the truth, how that the Egyptians possessed no powerful military organization, not a hoplite, not a weapon, 30 not a spearman, not a spear. And so these Scythians made up their minds, at the present juncture, to get possession of the gates

if possible, and to call in those who had vainly given way to panic, for the whole city was being harried like a bird’s nest. Now is

a fierce fight waged about these gates, and in this the Egyptians are victorious and sing a paean of victory. This was another terror to the foreigners both those within the city and those without, for the latter party thought the matter had been settled by the Egyptians against the former, the former against the latter, and 5 thus each section lamented over the other. The victors do not succeed in closing all the doors in all the gates (no small work this in Thebes,’ whose hundred gates are celebrated in Greek song), before a man who had shared in the struggle round the gates runs through from the midst of the fighting for this very purpose, 10 announces the news to the Scythians, and promises them the city. These then came to the spot in vain, and at once praised and blamed their fortune: for a while they greatly congratulated themselves on their escape from the net, but later they demanded orders to burst through the wall for the purpose of again occupying 15 the town. Thus the wisdom of a god is an irresistible thing, and neither is weapon strong nor mind devising, unless a god be present with it, and so men have ere now conducted a campaign against themselves. It seems to me to have been most happily said that man is a plaything of a god, one who is always sporting and 20 playing a game of draughts with events.?, And I think that Homer was the first of the Greeks to observe this, and sang of a contest and of prizes offered for every sort of struggle over the tomb of Patroclus, though in every respect those who are most expected to win fall short. Teucer loses the first prize to an 25 insignificant bowman,’ and,

‘The best driver of whole-hoofed horses is last’ ;*

again in skill of foot a young man is defeated by a man in his

prime, and in the competition in heavy armour? Ajax is worsted—

and yet, Homer heralds Ajax as being by far the best of all 30 1 Cf. Homer, Iliad, ix. 381 ff. 2 Plato, Leges, 803 c.

3 Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 850-883. * Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 536. 5 Cf. Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 785 ff., 836 ff. 859 ff.

those assembled before Troy, with the exception of Achilles.’ He asserts that skill, training, youth, and superiority of constitution are all small things in comparison with the divine power.

3. The Egyptians then, when they had now brilliantly carried

5 the gates and had put the wall between themselves and the enemy, turning upon those who were left within, alike stray individuals and assembled masses, threw missiles, cast javelins, struck them, and ran them through. Some of them who had found a fortified shelter they smoked out as though they had been wasps, temples, to priests and all, Typho, the while, thundering complaints, for he had become Scythian even in his religious views, and demanded a treaty of peace with the barbarians, scheming again to admit the enemy army, on the ground that no irremediable evil had occurred. But they, the people, were all unbidden, 15 without generals, except that by the gift of the gods every individual was himself general and soldier, captain and private. What might not happen at a moment when the god is willing and gives the initiative to men to save themselves by every means in their power? Nor did they yet give over the gates to Typho, and 20 in other respects the despotic rule was lifeless, the moment that the party which organized it had been banished from the city. The first meeting was held at the house of the high-priest, a sacred fire was kindled, prayers of thanksgiving were offered up for what had been accomplished, and intercessions for what 25 should happen in the future. Then they called for Osiris on the ground that there was no other salvation for their government than he. Now the priest promised him to them, the gods granting it, together with any men who had fallen with him because they were accused of sharing his views. But they decided

30 to beguile Typho for some time still. He had not indeed suffered immediately his due penalty (and the penalty was that the man

1 Homer, Iliad, ii. 768. 2878.2 L

most culpable for the sometime servile attitude of the Egyptians towards the Scythians should become a victim and a preparatory sacrifice for the war), and when Justice,’ who is wise and knows well how to keep opportunities under her control, delayed his case, the latter, I say, even then thought that all this would escape 5 the gods. And as he was still in the outward panoply of the despotic power, he began levying taxes more keenly and shamefully than ever, and went so far as to extort contributions a second time even from his servants.

At one moment he would threaten to do violent mischief ro while he still had the power, at another again he was grovelling, and speaking piteously, ‘that,’ quoth he, ‘I may not lose my kingdom.’ So completely had he lost his head, and had actually become so puffed up in mind as to expect to get round the priest by flattery and bribes. But it was not right of him to place 15 money before the ordinances of his fathers. Nay, even when the aliens had broken up their camp with all their might and were already far from Thebes, he again brought them back, by envoys and suppliants and presents. Every act and device of his was a glaring announcement that he would again hand over Egyptian 20 interests to the foreigners. He himself was evidently quite without anxiety on the score of his beloved Scythians, and even if he had not been so, at all events he was glad that he would not live to see Osiris returned from exile, and taking a place in the government. Since, in any case, the foreigners now attacked 25 the country, obviously not, as they had done before, with a view

1269 to changing Egyptian institutions, but rather to tearing them up by the roots, and to Scythianizing the government, and since, in a word, the drama now being enacted held the most disastrous elements of two evils—war and faction—: the evil of faction, 30 namely, the domestic cessions and betrayals which are attempted

1 Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 256, for the earliest conception of Dike. (Crawford, p. 535.)

least of all in war-time; and of war, that danger which is the common lot of all: since these factions then, in an attempt to save the commonwealth, sought the transference of the leadership from its possessors to others, at that time, from both sides, the worst s elements prevailed, and not one of the Egyptians, not even the most utterly worthless, was left, to whom the tyrant did not seem to be planning and doing things deserving of indignation: for they were becoming chastened through fear. Now this was the moment for which the gods had determined to wait, that no ro smouldering ember of the opposite faction should be secretly kept alive in the state, which might contain pretexts for evil, if not just, at least plausible. So, although late in the day, there is a meeting of gods and elders concerning Typho, and what has long been the conimon talk of all in private, is disclosed. Women who spoke 15 both tongues for the benefit of the women who did not understand each other’s views, translated the words of the foreign language into the Egyptian, contrariwise the words of the Egyptian into the foreign. And there were, moreover, the effeminate men, and spies, and 20 all belonging to the company of those suborned by Typho and his wife against Osiris, who themselves were to give the most terrible evidence, namely that Osiris had surrendered the occupation of key positions, and had all but brought on the siege himself, that a reign of terror might envelop the sacred city: that he 25 was in all haste to make the Scythians pass to the other side of the riveralso, that the Egyptian fortunes should not merely half suffer, but that all things should be removed root and branch, and that they should not have time to send for Osiris. When all this had come out, the men, on the one hand, unanimously condemn Typho 30 to confinement, and decide to institute a second trial for him to determine what punishment he should suffer, or what fine he should pay. The gods, on the other, praised the assessors who took part, for having condemned the man according to his deserts, but they them-

selves voted that when he had left this life, he should be given up to the avenging deities, and should dwell in Cocytus, and should finally become a pernicious and infernal demon, an object to be classed with the Titans and Giants, and should never see Elysium even in a dream, but would lift up his eyes with difficulty to get 5 a glimpse of that sacred light which is an object of contemplation to virtuous souls and blessed gods.

1272 °4. So much for what concerns Typho, since all this may be

told; for what could be sacred and ineffable in an earthly nature? But the life of Osiris is alluded to as a sacred thing, 10 and has been deified, so that it is dangerous to expose it to the risk of narration. His birth, his upbringing, his early and later education, his important posts of leadership, and how the gods and inspired men elevated him to the highest rule, how he ruled in this, how the plot was formed against him, to what 15 extent it succeeded, and how it ultimately failed, all this is not unworthy of general consideration, and has been told; I will only add that to this man, fortunate in all things, even his exile was not without profit. For in that time he was initiated into the most perfect mysteries of the gods above, and saw the sacred visions, 20 and waited patiently for the spectacle, once he had laid aside state affairs. Let mention be made here also of his auspicious return, and of the crowds of men crowned with garlands conducting him back amid the company of the gods, and pouring over the whole land to escort him in turn ; and then the midnight revels, the torch- 25 light processions, the distributions of prizes, the year named after him, and also his second act of pardon to his hostile brother, mercy for whom he begged from a people boiling with indignation, and how he prayed to the gods for his brother’s salvation, acting in this case with more generosity than justice. 30

5. We may safely venture to say as much as this about Osiris; but beyond this let only words of good augury be spoken, says

one who cautiously employs sacred language. As to those things which lie far away, it would be the part of a foolhardy mind and tongue to reveal them, and let them be kept in holy silence untouched by written words, lest one should

5 ‘Cast an eye on anything not permitted,’

for he who reveals, as he who sees, such things incurs the wrath of the divine nature. Boeotian legends tear to pieces those who intrude and spy upon the secret rites of Dionysus. Ignorance in the case of initiations is sanctity. On this account the night is ro entrusted with the mysteries, andcaverns that may not be trodden are hollowed out for this reason. Moments and places are chosen that know how to conceal the inspired celebration of the mysteries. Only so much perchance it is lawful to say, and cloaking the inviolable to what extent we may, we say it, how that Osiris in his 15 old age was more glorious than in his youth. The gods gave him as a reward to rule over the state with greater prestige, so as to be shown as one superior to injury from men, and the prosperity which he had given the Egyptians, but found obliterated by Typho’s period, he not merely restored, but made by its 20 development incomparably superior to its former state. So the former seemed to be merely a prelude to the latter, and nothing but a promise once sung by the Greek poets, how that the virgin who is now a constellation (and whom we call, I think, Justice), ‘on the earth dwelling aforetime, 25 Face to face met all men, nor ever of mortals disdained she F’en in that far distant past the tribes or of men or of women. With them she mingled and there took her seat, though a goddess immortal.’? how she stayed under the same roof with man,— 30 «= ‘For in that time men knew naught of bitter discord, of struggle Of contestations that menace, of all the tumult of battle.

1 Aratus, Phaenomena, 101 ff.

Thus their lifetime they passed, and the harsh sea was far away from them,

Nor did ships come to bring them supplies from lands o’er the ocean ;

Theirs were the plough and the oxen, and theirs that queen of the people. 5

Dike, ’tis she who dispenses by thousands her gifts of all justice.

So bloomed this age for a span when the golden race the earth nourished.’ *

He says, then, that as long as men did not use the sea they were golden and had dealings with gods, but when ships came to them 1o for the service of a strenuous life, then Justice flitted so far away from earth, that she could scarcely be seen on a clear night ; and to be sure, when she is visible, she offers us an ear of corn instead of a rudder. Probably she would come down to us now, and would again speak to us face to face if we busied ourselves with agri- 15 culture, and despised seafaring. Now no other period has attained to this that the poets sang of long ago concerning her, save only the period of the glorious reign of Osiris. And if the gods, when bringing him back from exile, did not at that very moment put everything in his hands, let us not hold a contrary view on this score. 20 It is not in the nature of a state to change suddenly for the better, in the way that it changes suddenly for the worse; for evil is a thing self-taught,” whereas virtue is acquired only through toil. Needs must that those who purify first should intervene, but that the divinity should move leisurely and in order. But Osiris, before 35 he entered upon a life of action, had to see and hear many things, for many a report is kept away from a king.

6. Enough, for we must now take care lest we parade anything of the unutterable mysteries. First, may the sacred rites be propitious to us, next, to us who have long learned of past and present 30 happenings to a brother, it seems somewhat wonderful and worthy

1 Aratus, Phaenomena, 108 ff. 2 Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 287 f.

of inquiry, why it is that whensoever some nature is born distinctly better or worse, not in a small degree but very greatly, as for example a virtue unmixed with evil, or evil unmixed with virtue, there grows up also near at hand, in some way, its undiluted op-

§ posite, in such wise that from one home proceed two completely alien things, and at the same time there is one root for the two growths. Let us inquire then of philosophy, what she will allege as the cause of this incredible thing. She might reply, borrowing a little from poetry,—

10 6‘ There are two casks that lie in the antechamber of Zeus, One of gifts evil such as he gives, but the other of good ones.’?

He pours in and mingles from each, for the most part equally or a little less, so that the equilibrium of nature may be well established. But whenever by chance he pours in from one of the por-

1§ tions without reserve, and whenever in such a case some father becomes entirely happy or most unfortunate in his first-born, then what 1s left is inevitably employed for the other one, for the god who is the distributor will compensate for what is lacking, inasmuch as there must be an equal amount from each of the two

zo casks. Else in the beginning there are equal seeds from both casks in the offspring, and both become one by reason of their common nature. And whenever any one spends beforehand the isolated contents of one cask in any way whatever, he has the remaining portion quite unmixed.’

25 Saying these things philosophy might persuade us, for we see that the fruit of the fig tree is most sweet, whereas the leaves, the bark, the root and the trunk are only fit for curdling milk.

It would seem then that whatever of an inferior sort the nature of the tree possesses, this it has entirely spent on the parts unfit for

30 food, but has left the best part uncontaminated in the fruit of the tree. Thus, too, the husbandinen’s sons, for we must employ

2 Homer, Iliad, xxiv. 527 f. 2 Cf. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 369.

homely illustrations if we are to do more towards the acceptance of truth: thus these men, I say, taught so perhaps by nature, plant evil-smelling flowers next to the fragrant, and sweet plants next to bitter, in order that these last, drawing to themselves by their kinship with it such amount of evil as the earth has 5 entangled with itself, may leave the better taste and odour in the better roots, alone and cleansed. And this process purifies a garden plot.

7. From this argument it follows, in the fashion of one geometrical corollary emerging together with another, that the older sons 10 in families are born quite worthless. And this becomes a purifier of seeds in relationship, when a god is preparing to generate virtue pure and undefiled. And then it turns out in this way, that precisely what seems to be most closely related, is the most alien of all things. Now while this is not very apt to take place amongst those who !5 develop in the normal course of nature, namely those who are half evil and half good, it is found among those who look down upon nature, and occupy separate parts of it, parts which nature keeps and bestows intertwined with each other, and herein it

1277 would have been extraordinary if this had not happened. 20

Enough has now been said about this, but another question wrapt up in it seems to demand further consideration. That in various places and in various periods of time thesame events should have often taken place, that old men should have become spectators of the very things which they heard about when they were boys, 25 either from books or from their grandfathers’ tales, this seems to me the most incredible thing, and if it 1s not to remain incredible, it is worth while that a cause should be found for it. Let us speak then, when we have found the proper cause, for perhaps a philosophic truth is neither small nor very easy. We must regard the 30 universe as a single whole completed in its parts; we shall then think ofit asconfluent, and animated by the same breath, for in this

way only could it save its unity, and we shall not represent its parts as devoid of fellow-feeling for one another, for how can they be one unless they are knit together by nature? They will act on each other, and be acted upon by each other; some parts will only

s act and others will only be acted upon. Proceeding therefore on this hypothesis to the subject of our examination, we should logically make the happy body moving in a circle, the cause of what happens here below.’ Both are parts of it and they have some relation with each other, and if generation functions in the things 1o about us, the cause of the generation is in those things above us, and from thence the seeds of what takes place come here. Now

if any one were to advance this view, astronomy guiding his convictions, namely that there are recurrent orbits of stars and spheres, the simple and the composite alike, that man would at one moment

15 Speak Egyptian and at another Greek, and would from both languages attain to perfect wisdom, combining intelligence with knowledge. Such a man would not fail to recognize that when the same movements come again, effects return together with causes, and lives now on the earth are the same as those of olden times, 20 also births, upbringings, opinions, and fortunes. We should not therefore be surprised that we see quite ancient history renascent now, and that indeed we have seen it, inasmuch as things that have blossomed already, and blossomed for whole months at a time, agree completely with those things which have been revealed 25to us in history, and inasmuch as the ideas hidden in matter harmonize with the unutterable mysteries of story. Whatever manner of things these are, it is not yet lawful, for me at least, to divulge, though one man will make one guess, another man another : and men eager for knowledge of the future, in whose ears

30 my story may have sounded a clarion note, will bend over this Egyptian history, drawing from thence a likeness to the present time enigmatically concealed in it. But in regard to truth, these

1 Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 40, and passim. 2878.2 M

things do not sound in unison; and let men know that they are not even pious in their attempts, when they heap up before them what should long have been kept buried,—

1280 ‘For the high gods hold the life of mortals but keep it close hidden.’

8. Pythagoras of Samos avers that the wise man is naught but s a spectator of things that are, and of things that have come into existence. For God has summoned him into the universe as to a sacred contest, to be a spectator of the proceedings therein. Let us inquire therefore what sort of spectator the appointed one should be. Or must we say something that is definite and obvious, 10 namely that it should be he who awaits in his place the things shown him, one by one, as they stoop forward in order from out the curtain? And if any one forces his way on to the stage, and, as the phrase goes, ‘looks at it like an impudent hound,’ usurping a right to survey the whole preparation on the other side of the 15 proscenium, against such an one the Greek judges arm their beadles. But even if he were to evade these, he would understand nothing clearly, he would make out with difficulty blurred and indistinguishable images. However, it is the custom in the theatre to say a foreword in advance, and it needs must be that some one come 20 forward to discourse to the audience on what they are to see in another moment. Such a man is making no mistake, for he is in the service of the president of the games, and gets from him his knowledge, without playing the busybody to find out more, and thereby moving things that should be immovable. When he has 25 learned his part, he must keep silent before hastening to publish it, since as a matter of fact custom enjoins that even actors do not always know at what moment of the performance they are to appear, but must await the signal for their entrance on the stage to be sent down to them. In the same way the man to whom God 30 communicates the preparations of those things which are stored up in life by nature, out of respect for the honour granted him,

should hold his peace not less, but even more, than those who have heard nothing. It is the unknown about which guesses are made, but conjecture, if it goes too far, is most unstable, and in that case words are superfluous; but there is a separation

5s between knowledge and truth, a separation between word and truth also.

But even this will be hidden by the wise man, since God pledges this loyalty of His, as it were, and men hate facile speakers. Let not the man whom God deems unworthy of initiation, push

ro himself forward or be an eavesdropper, for, again, men hate busybodies. In any case there is no reason for one to be distressed who is certain soon to get his deserts. A short time apportions to man what is his due, and in the end things become common objects for sight and hearing. 15 ‘The future days Are our wisest witnesses.’

1 Pindar, Olymp. i. 34 f.

PREFACE

IT is an old tradition, I think, and quite in the manner of Plato, to conceal the profound thoughts of philosophy behind the mask of some lighter treatment, that thereby whatsoever has been acquired with difficulty shall not be again lost to men, nor shall such matters be contaminated by lying exposed to the approach 5 of the profane. This end accordingly has been most zealously pursued in the present work, and whether it attains this end, and whether in other respects it is wrought out with distinction after the manner of the ancients, let those decide who shall approach it in a spirit of loving labour. 10

1. If dreams are prophets, and if the visions seen in dreams are riddles of their future fortunes to anxious men, they would in that case be full of wisdom, though certainly not clear. In sooth their lack of clearness is their wisdom.

1284 ‘For the gods keep man’s life concealed." 15

To obtain the greatest things without labour is a divine prerogative, whereas for men, not merely ‘in front of virtue’ but of all fair things,

‘The gods have set sweat.’? Now divination must be the greatest of all good things, for it is in 20 knowledge and, in a word, in the cognitional part of his faculties that God differs from man, as does man from the brute. But

1 Hesiod, Works and Days, 42; cf. p. 1234 A. 2 Ibid., 289.

whereas the nature of God is sufficient unto Himself for knowledge, man through divination attains to much more than belongs to our human nature. For the mass of mankind can know only the present. Concerning that which has never been, it can only guess;

s and Calchas was the only one in the whole Greek assembly who understood

‘The things which are, the things which shall be, and the things which have been.’

And according to Homer, the affairs of the gods are dependent on 1o the judgement of Zeus, for this reason, that

‘he came into being before them and has the more knowledge,’

by the very fact, I suppose, that he is older. For I think that the reference to age in these verses points to the conclusion that to know more comes through time, and knowledge was, it seems,

15 the most precious thing. But if any one is persuaded on the authority of other passages that the rule of Zeus rests in the strong hand, as in the text

‘he was superior in force,’

that man’s acquaintance with poetry is that of the vulgar, and

zohe has never heard of the philosophy therein, which affirms that the gods are nothing else but minds. It is in this sense that to the words ‘he was superior in prowess’, he has fastened the words ‘he is more ancient in days ’, meaning that Zeus is an elderborn intelligence; for what else is strength of mind but intelli-

as gent thought? Whosoever, being a god, is deemed worthy to rule over gods, rules in that he is mind by the superior force of wisdom. Therefore the phrase,

‘he was superior in force,’

1 Tliad, i. 70. 2 Ikiad, xiii. 355. 3 Odyssey, xviii. 234.

comes back to the same thing for us as ‘he has greater knowledge,’

and means this. For this reason also is the wise man akin to God, because he strives to approach Him in knowledge, and occupies himself with thought, in the which the divine essence has its being. 5

[ 2. Let the foregoing be proof that divinations are amongst the best of the vocations of man; and if all things are signs appearing through all things, inasmuch as they are brothers in a single living creature, the cosmos, so also they are written characters of every kind, just as of those in a book some are Phoenician, some 10 Egyptian, and others Assyrian.

The scholar reads these, and he is a scholar who learns by his natural bent. One reads some of them and another reads others, one reads more and another less. In the same way one reads them by syllables, another reads the complete phrase, another the whole 15 story. In like manner do the learned see the future, some under- Standing stars, and of these, one the fixed stars, another those flames which shoot across the sky. Again, there are those who readit from the entrails, and from the cries of birds, and from their perches and flights. To others also what are termed omens are 20 manifest, written indications these of things to be, and again voices and encounters otherwise intended, for all things have their significance for every one. In the same way, if birds had had

1285 wisdom, they would have compiled an art of divining the future from men, just as we have from them; for we are to them, just as 25 they are to us, alike young and old, very old and very fortunate.

It must needs be, I think, that the parts of this great whole, since it all shares one feeling and one breath, belong to each other. They are, in fact, limbs of one entire body, and may not the spells of the magicians be even such as these? Obviously, 30 for charms are cast from one part of it to another, as signals are given, and he is a sage who understands the relationship

of the parts of the universe. One thing he attracts to himself through the agency of another thing, for he has present with him pledges of things which are for the most part far away, to wit, voices, substances, and figures. And as when the bowel is in pain, s another part suffers also with it, so a pain in the finger settles in the groin,' although there be many organs between these parts which feel nothing. This is because they are both portions of one living organism, and there is that which binds them one to the other more than to 1o other things. Even to some god, of those who dwell within the universe, a stone from hence and a herb is a befitting offering; for in sympathizing with these he is yielding to nature and is bewitched. Thus the harp-player who has sounded the highest note does not sound the sesquioctavus next, but rather strikes 15 the epitrite and the nete, a heritage of to-day from a more ancient state of harmony. But there is in the cosmos, even as in human relationship, a certain discord also; for the universe is not one homogeneous thing but a unity formed of many. There are parts of it which agree and yet battle with other parts, and the 20 struggle of these only contributes to a harmonious unity of the whole, just as the lyre is a system of responsive and harmonious notes.* The unity resulting from opposites is the harmony both of the lyre and of the cosmos.* Archimedes the Sicilian * asked for a point of support outside of the earth wherefrom he might prop 25 himself against the whole earth, for he said that as long as he was himself upon the earth he had no power over it. But the man, howso great his knowledge of the nature of the universe may be, once placed outside of it, could no longer make any use of his wisdom. He uses the universe against itself ; accordingly his touch 30 with it once lost, he will watch it in vain, and lifeless symbols only

1 Plato, Republic, 462 c.

2 Plato, Timaeus, 36 a, B; Leges, 812 D.

3 Cf. Proclus, In Tim. ii. p.95 (quoted by Cudworth, i. 514). * Plutarch, Marcus Marcellus, 14.

would then be recorded. And small wonder, for whatever of the divine element is outside the cosmos can in no wise be moved by sorcery.

‘He sits apart and careth not

Nor taketh any thought thereof.” 5 It is the nature of pure reason not to be deflected; it is only the emotional element which may be cajoled. Wherefore the multitude of things in the universe and their relationship furnish the bulk of the subject-matter in the initiations and prophecies. There is a multitude of the discordant elements, but a relation- 10 ship in the unity of things existing. Now, as to initiations, let not our law-abiding discourse noise them abroad; there is no offence, however, in explaining divination. |

1288 3. The whole of this art has already been praised as much as possible, but now it is time to appropriate the best part that is in 15 it, and to linger over its speculative side. We must regard a character of obscurity as common to all its forms, nor must we consider as disproof of any one of them what is observed in the whole cycle of nature. Our words attempted to show that this element of obscurity is sacred, just as in the initiations the unutterable is 20 sacred. In like manner oracles are uttered so as not to be intelligible to all men, and for this was the oracle at Pytho called Loxias (the ambiguous). Thus, when the god gave out that a wooden wall? would be the salvation of the Athenians, the people meeting in assembly would have heard the oracle in vain, had not Themis- 25 tocles read its meaning. Not for this reason, therefore, should divination by dreams be dismissed, for it shares obscurity with oracles as with other phenomena. We ought to seek this branch of knowledge before all else ; for it comes from us, 1s within us, and is the special possession of the soul of each one of us. ‘Mind holds 30 the shapes of things that be’, says the ancient philosophy, and we

1 Ihiad, xv. 106 f. 2 Herodotus, vii. 141, 143.

might add that those which come into being also have a soul,

since mind is to soul as real being is to becoming. Now, taking the

first term with the third, and the second with the fourth, and

stating them in this inverse order, we shall no less arrive at the s truth, following the definitions of science.

In this way what we postulated will be demonstrated, namely that the soul holds the forms of things that come into being. It holds, indeed, all, but it produces only what is befitting, and it reflects as in a mirror the image, by means of which the living

ro being grasps those things that remain there. Therefore, as we do not understand the activities of the mind before the controlling force has announced them to the multitude, and whatever has not come to that controlling force is hidden from the living being; so then we shall not have a perception even of the forms in the first 15 soul, before the impress of them comes to the imagination. And this very imagination seems to be a sort of life in itself, a little lower down in the scale, and having its basis in a peculiar property of nature. It has even its own sense-perceptions, for we see colours and we hear sounds, and we have an overpowering sense of touch, 20 at times when the organic parts of the body are at rest. Perhaps this form of sense-perception is the more hallowed. In this way we constantly enter into relationship with gods who give us counsel and answer us in oracles, and take care of us in other ways. So then, if any one, in his dreams, receives the present of 25 a treasure, I shall not be at all surprised; or if a man quite uncultured should fall asleep and, meeting the Muses in his dream and exchanging question and answer with them, should become a cunning bard. This has happened in our own time and does not seem to me very astounding. I pass over plots that have been 30 revealed, and the number of people whom the dream in the guise of a physician has cured of illness. But whenever a dream opens up to the soul a path conducting it to the most perfect points from which to view existing things, a soul that has never yet aspired, nor 2878.2 N

has given its mind to the ascent,’ it would be indeed the climax of the occult force in existing things that this dream should override nature and unite to the realm of mind the man who has wandered so far from it that he knows not whence he has come. -

And if any one deems the way upward a great undertaking, but 5s disbelieves in the imagination, for that even by its means the happy union may ne’er be gained, let him listen to the sacred oracles which tell of the diverging paths, after hearing, of course, the whole list of the available resources for the ascent, in virtue of which it is possible to make the seed within us grow: 10

‘To some’, it is written, ‘he gave the revelation of the light to be a lesson, Others even in their dreams, He made fruitful with His courage.’ *

Do you see? He makes a distinction between the happy possession of knowledge and its acquirement. One man learns, he means, while awake, another while asleep. But in the waking state man 1s is the teacher, whereas it is God who makes the dreamer fruitful with His own courage, so that learning and attaining are one and the same. Now to make fruitful is even more than to teach.

4. Let this be taken as presenting the worthiness of the imaginative life, even in small matters, as against those who despair of it. 20 It is not to be wondered at that they understand it in this way, owing to the exceptional nature of their knowledge, since they adhere to what has been abjured by the oracles, for the oracle says,

‘I reck not of sacrifices, or of entrails, 25 These be all baubles,’ *

and exhorts us to flee from them. But these men, as though they were above the common herd, attempt to practise arts whose province relates to the future, some taking up one, some another ; they despise dreams as being too obvious, and as matters in which 30

1 Plato, Repub. 517 B. 2 Not in the Sibylline Oracles, ed. Geffcken (Leipzig, 1902). 3 Probably from the same source as the last.

honours come equally to the ignorant and to the wise. But is not a man wise, precisely because he gains a greater share out of a possession common to all? Surely the other good things, nay, even the greatest are set before us as the most open to all. Amongst s things visible there is nothing more august in splendour than the sun, and at the same time nothing more universal. And if to look upon a god with one’s own eye is a happy thing, the approach to Him by the imagination comes of a gaze more magnificent still. For this is the perception of perceptions,’ inasmuch as the imagina- 10 tive pneuma is the most widely shared organ of sensation, and the first body of the soul. There it lurks in its fastness, and directs the government of the living being as from a citadel,? for about it nature has constructed all the functions of the brain. Hearing and sight are not senses, but only subservient organs of the common 15 sense-perception, like doorkeepers of the living being who announce to their mistress the things perceived outside, and from which things these external organs of sense receive knocks at the door. And this is the perfect sense-perception in all its parts, for it hears and sees with its whole pnewma and has power over all the 20 remaining senses. It divides its powers, assigning one to one place and another to another. These powers stretch out from the living being, each one separately, and, like straight lines radiating from a centre, return to and meet in the centre again, all of them one in their common root though many in their out- 25 goings. Most animal in character, therefore, is perception through the organs projected without, nor is it sense-perception at all before it comes in contact with the chief perception (s.¢. imagination). But the more divine which cleaves to the soul is the direct perception. 30 Now if we hold our bodily senses in esteem by reason of our understanding, and because we know best what we have actually 1292

1 This rendering must not be understood to mean a xar’ dfoxfw perception. 2 See p. 259, n. 2.

feo

seen, and spurn imagination as more faithless than sense-perception, we seem to resemble those who forget that even the eye does not reveal all things truthfully. One eye reveals nothing, and another falsifies, both in a way contrary to the nature of the things seen, and because of the medium through which they are seen. For according to the distance of the observer, objects seem greater or less. Those under the water appear larger, and an oar blade once immersed strikes the eye as broken. And the eye, through its own lack of power produces this effect, for when bleared it represents everything in confusion and indistinctness, nor may a man who is diseased in his imaginative pneuma expect to have clear or well-defined images. What his disease is, by what things the imagination becomes bleared and dulled, and by what things it is purged and purified, so as to return to its natural condition, all this you must learn of the cryptic philosophy, through which the imagination becomes inspired when once purified by the initiations. }

The extraneous bodies which have entered in, must make their way out again before the god brings in the imagination. Whoever keeps this purified by a life in accordance with nature has an instrument ready to his hand, and one that is thus again common to all, for this neuma comprehends our spiritual disposition and is, therefore, not without sympathy for it, like our oyster-shell which, after all, is opposed to the better parts of the soul’s organization. But its first and special vehicle’ becomes light and ethereal when the soul is exalted, whereas when that is debased, it becomes heavy and fallstotheearth. Nowthisis, ina word, the borderland between unreason and reason, between the bodiless and the body, and is a boundary common to both, and through this the divine elements are brought into contact with those furthest removed from them. For this reason it is difficult for philosophy to apprehend its nature, for it borrows anything that is suitable to its purpose, taking it

1 Plato, Phaedo, 85 D.

jo

from either of the extremes, as it were from neighbours, and so images in one nature things that dwell far apart.

5. Nature has poured the richness of the imaginative essence into many parts of existing things ; it descends even to the animals s which have as yet no understanding, and is no longer the vehicle of the more divine soul, but itself rests upon the forces beneath, being itself the reason of the animal ;? and many things this creature thinks and does befittingly through its agency. Thus a cleansing takes place even in creatures without reason, with the result that ro a better force enters in. Whole races of demons also have their existence in such a life as this. For whereas these throughout all their being are phantasmic, making their appearance as images in things that are coming into being, in the case of man most things come by imagination and that alone, though in truth? a good 15 Many in company with another, for we do not form thoughtconcepts without imagination, unless it so be that some man in

a rare moment of time grasps even an immaterial form. To go beyond the imagination would be no less difficult than happy to achieve. ‘For’, the master® says, ‘happy the man to 20 whom understanding and prudence come even in old age’, speaking of prudence bereft of imagination. But the life in question (s.e. dream life) is founded on imagination or on that intellect which makes use of imagination. This envelope of soul-matter which the happy have called the enveloping soul, is in turn god, demon of 25 every sort, and phantom, and in it the soul pays its penalties, for the oracles are agreed about this, to wit, the similarity of the soul’s way of life in another world to the imaginings of the dream condition ; and philosophy concludes that our first lives are but the preparation for second lives, and that the best conduct in the case 30 of souls lightens it (i.e. the pneuma), whereas the worst imparts a stain to them. Through the attractive forces of nature, therefore, 1 Aristot. De An. iii.3.9. 7 Reading f instead of#. ° cf. Plato, Phtleb. 21 p-z.

the soul is drawn upwards by reason of its own warmth and dryness. This is the winged flight of the soul, and we shall find that the expression of Heraclitus, “The wise soul is dry’, signifies naught else than this. On the other hand, when it becomes thick and moist, it sinks into the hollows of the earth by its downward momentum, 5; lurks in holes, and is finally pushed into the regions below the earth; for this spot is the most suitable to the spirits clogged with moisture, and there the life is ill-starred and full of vengeance. But it is possible through labour and time and other lives that it may become purified and rise to the surface, for becoming a thing ro of dual nature, it runs in a double channel of life and partly consorts with the worst, partly with the better. Now descending from the spheres, the first soul takes a lease of this other one, embarking in it as in a boat, and so associates with the world of body.

It enters upon this struggle, either to conduct that soul above rs with it, or at least not to remain with it below. Difficult indeed is this, and possibly it may leave the other behind, as incapable of accompanying it, a thing scarcely permitted us to believe in view of the revealed mysteries, for the ascent would be shameful for souls who do not return property not their own, but leave upon 20 earth what they have borrowed from above. And this might happen to one or two people as a gift of initiation and of God’s grace, but it is in the course of nature that the soul which has once been engrafted thereon, either bends to the oar with the other or draws it away, or is drawn away by it, but in any case remains with it 25 until the soul’s ascent to the regions whence it came; or weighed down by reason of its evil, it drags below with it the soul which has already permitted it to grow too heavy. And it is this with which ' the oracles menace the seed of mind within us, saying, “Bend thou not down far below to the world mid obscurity gleaming, 30 Alway spread out are its depths, a treacherous region where Hades Lurks in the gloom and delighteth in phantoms, never in reason.’

1 Reading instead of 6.

How can a life unstable and unintelligent be a thing of beauty tothe mind? To the phantom, indeed, because of the nature of its pneuma at that moment, the region below is befitting; for like rejoices in like. But if one comes into existence from the con-

§ junction of both, the mind also would be swamped with sensual pleasures. Yet it would be the very last of evils, not even to perceive an evil that is present ; for this is the way of those who seek not to rise above evil. And just as a hardened tumour, by reason of its no more paining us, fails to remind us to cure our-

10 Selves, so repentance is an uplifting force. A man, finding his situation intolerable, plans flight, and the will is the most important part of purification ; for thus his words and deeds alike stretch out hands towards the goal. But when will is lacking, every purificatory initiation is lifeless, severed as it is from the 1§ greatest covenant. And for this reason, here and there, the minglings (of good and evil) furnish the greatest and the best service to the order of the universe, when, for a change, they bring grief to man and so purify his soul from frivolous enjoyment. Even things unjustly called misfortunes contribute greatly in 20 loosening the hold that we keep on the lower elements. The first providence is revealed to those who have intellect by the same principles which cause distrust in it to those who lack intellect. Nor is it possible that the soul should ever be turned away from matter, if it does not fall foul of any misfortune in this world. 2s Therefore we must suppose that the much talked-of good fortunes are an invention of the lords of the underworld for the ambush of souls. Consequently, what Lethaean potion there may be to the souls that have departed this life, let another tell us, but to a soul entering life such a potion is certainly 30 Offered in that which is sweet and cloying here on earth. For, descending into the first life voluntarily as a maid of service, this soul, instead of serving, becomes enslaved. Its mission was to fulfil a service to the constitution of the universe, for

the laws of Adrastea impose this upon it; but, bewitched by the gifts of matter, it undergoes an experience very like that of free men who have entered into a contract of service for an agreedupon period, but who, captivated by the beauty of some handmaiden, desire to remain in their employment at the price of s slavery to the master of the beloved. We too, when at any time from the depths of our hearts we take delight in what is of the body and lies at its portals, deeming it good, seem to confess to the nature of matter, that it is fair. Now matter receives our assent as a secret contract, and even if we plan to depart as free 10 men, affirms that we are fugitive slaves. She tries to bring us back and arrests us as runaways, reading over to us the while our contract. Then, indeed, have we most of all need of strength and the help of God for our souls, for it entails no light struggle to take exception to, and perchance to violate, one’s own contract. 15 Then, indeed, are the penalties of matter stirred up even beyond that which was predestined against those who have rebelled against her laws. This is really the meaning of the so-called labours which sacred legends tell us that Heracles endured, and in general any other man who has attempted to gain his freedom 20 by force, until the day when they have transported the spirit to the realm to which the hands of nature cannot attain.

But if the leap ends within the confines of matter, there is a fall, and more severe contests become necessary, for matter then treats souls mercilessly as aliens, and even if they renounce 25 the upward path, she exacts punishment for the attempt itself, and keeps pouring out lives, but no longer from both those jars which Homer’ darkly shadows forth as being two portions of matter. According to that passage of his poem, Zeus is the god ruling over matter, and the dispenser of the ambiguity of destiny, 30 and the good that comes from him has never been unmixed, though ere now it has happened to a man to partake of the more evil

1 Homer, Iliad, xxiv. 527; Plato, Repub. 379 c.

portion unalloyed. Now, all lives go in an erring course, one which has not risen after the first fall. But observe in how great an interval of space this pneuma dwells. The argument said that, when the soul fell below, it was weighed down and sank until it encountered

s the murky darkly-gleaming spot, but that when the soul rises the pneuma accompanies it as far as it is able; and it is able to follow until it has come to the farthest opposite point. Listen to the oracles as they speak of this also :

“Refuse it will not consign to the chasm abysmal of matter;

10 ~— Leaves but a part in the clear-shining space given o’er to the image.’ This place is the opposite of the one encircled in gloom. And yet one might be more sharp-sighted in this case. It does not seem to bring up to the spheres the nature that has come from thence unaccompanied, but to bring with it what it snatched from the

15 extremes of fire and air, when it came down to its phantom condition here below, before donning its earthly shell, and this, according to the oracle, it conducts above together with the stronger part, for the divine body could not be the off-scourings of matter. It would be logical that those things which have

20 2 common nature and are contributory to one end should not be altogether ungovernable, particularly when their domains are those of neighbours, just as fire is next to the surrounding body, and is not, like earth, the farthest from it of all.

But if the better elements yield place to the worse and rejoice

25 in community with them, and if an uncontaminated body has been contributory to the slime, as if appropriated by the element admitted to be stronger in the conjunction of the two, possibly the inferior ones also, not struggling against the soul’s energy, but docile and reasonable, meeting it themselves half-way, and keeping

so the medial nature undistracted, would, under the leadership of the first nature, become etherealized, and then would be borne aloft with it so as to traverse, if not the whole of the way, at least the

1 Druon translates pneuma here as ‘ imagination’. 2878.2 re)

summit of the elements, and so taste of the world of light. ‘For it has a certain portion in it,’ the oracles say: in a word, it takes its place in some one division of the orb of the world.

6. Let what has been said suffice concerning the destiny which the elements play. It is open to you to believe it or to disbelieve. 5 But as to the corporeal essence which has come from thence, there is nothing to prevent it, when the soul ascends according to the law of nature, from rising out of its fallen state, from ascending with it and becoming linked with the spheres, that is to say, being carried up as if to its own natural state of being. There are, then, 10 these two extreme lots, the one encircled by darkness and the other encircled by light, which occupy the limits of good and evil fortune. But in the hollow gulf of the universe how many intermediate places do you think there are, partly obscure and partly luminous, in all of which the soul has habitation, together with this 15 spirit envelope (pneuma), changing with it its ideas and morals and life? When it hastens aloft to its native nobility, it is a storehouse of truth, for it is pure, brightly shining, and unmixed, being a goddess and, if it so desires,a prophetess ; but when it falls,

1300 It becomes befogged, it lacks definiteness, it speaks falsely, for then 20 the misty element of the spirit envelope (pneuma) does not comprise the vitality of existing things.

And being in a medial position it would miss some truths although it might reach others. You might thus discern to what rank the demoniac nature belongs. To state the truth either 25 entirely or almost entirely, is divine, or near to the divine. Error in predictions of the future is a never-ending experience; passion and ambition belong to those who wallow in matter. It is in this way that the new-boiled wine puts on the guise both of a god and a superior demon and leaps in and takes possession of the country 3° reserved for the greater nature. Now since man has a soul, we might from that source discover what his position may be. If

a man’s imaginative pneuma is pure and well-defined, and whether he is waking or sleeping receives true impressions of things, it promises him a better lot, so far as the soul’s formation is concerned. Then again it is not least by the visions which it emits and around s which it lives, when undisturbed by another outside force, that we investigate what is the state of the spiritual pneuma, and philosophy, the while, furnishes us with tests to this end, so that we must of necessity cherish it and together see to it that we do not at any time wander. Now the best nurture for us is that we should 10 become active by the force of application, anticipating the onsets of weird and headlong visions, and that the emanation of life should be, as far as possible, once for all intellectual: for this is to be turned towards the best and delivered from the worst, and to hold intercourse with (material) things only as necessity entails. In- 15 tellectual application is the most incisive weapon against those things which combine to injure the pneuma, for this mysteriously refines it and raises it towards God; and when it has become adapted to it, draws the divine spirit-envelope (pneuma) by its kindred nature to association with the soul. In like manner, 20 whenever it becomes compressed by reason of its density and grows too small to fill the places assigned to it by that providence which has moulded man, to wit, the cavities of the brain; then since nature abhors a vacuum in existing things, an evil spiritenvelope (pneuma) enters in; and what suffering for the soul with

25 such an ill-omened guest at its board!

For as to those places which have come to exist for this very purpose of belonging to the pneuma, it is their nature to be occupied by a worse or by a better one. In the one case there is a penalty for the godless who have defiled the divine part in them, in the

30 other there is the goal of piety or whatsoever is near to that goal.

7. We, therefore, have set ourselves to speak of divination through dreams, that men should not despise it, but rather culti-

342 DE INSOMNITIS

vate it, seeing that it fulfils a service to life; and it is to this end that we have so much occupied ourselves with the imaginative nature. The immediate need of it here below has been perhaps less clearly shown by our discourse, but a better fruit of a sane spirit is the uplifting of the soul, a really sacred gain; so that it becomes a sort of cult of piety to endeavour that this form of divination should be ours. Nay, some men already through some such motive, enticed by their passion for knowledge of the future, have had set before them, instead of a groaning board a sacred and modest one, and have hailed the joys of a couch pure and undefiled. For as to the man who would consult his bed as he does the tripod of the Pythian deity, far be it from him to make the nights spent in it witnesses of unbridled passion. Rather does he bow before God and pray to Him. What is collected little by little becomes much in the end, and that which happens through quite another cause terminates in a greater one. Thus those who did not set out at first with this object have come, in their advance, to love God and one day to be united to Him. We must not therefore disregard a prophetic art which journeys to divine things, and has, dependent on it, the most precious of all things which are in the power of man. Nor indeed has the soul that is united with God less need here because of the fact that it has been deemed worthy to handle better things. Nor is it heedless of the animal in us.

Nay, from its vantage ground it has a steady and much more distinct view of things below than when it is with them and is mingled with the inferior elements. Remaining unmoved, it will give to the animal in us the appearances of things that come into existence. This is, according to the proverb, ‘to descend without descending’, where the better takes unchallenged mastery of the worse. This art of divination I resolve to possess for myself and to bequeath to my children. In order to enter upon this no man need pack up for a long journey or voyage beyond the frontiers,

=<

as to Pytho or to Hammon. It is enough to wash one’s hands, to keep a holy silence, and to sleep. ‘Then did she make all ablutions, and dressing in purified raiment Prayed she long time to Athene.. .”?

5s 8. Weshall pray for a dream, even as Homer, perchance, prayed. And if you are worthy, the god far away is present with you. Nay, even what time the god sets little store on these matters, he comes to your side if only you are asleep; and this is the whole system of the initiation. In it no one has ever yet lamented his poverty, zo on the ground that thus he had less possessions than the rich. On the other hand, some of the ceremonies which deal with foreknowledge choose their priests from the most heavily assessed as the Athenians chose their trierarchs. And great expense there must needs be, and, no less, happy opportunity, if we are to obtain 13 a Cretan herb, an Egyptian feather, an Iberian bone, and, by Zeus, some prodigy begotten and nourished in a hidden corner of earth or sea, ‘Where that the sun god sinks neath the earth and where he arises.’ ?

For surely this and much like it is said of those who practise

20 external divination, and what ordinary person would be rich enough for this out of his own resources? But the dream is visible to the man who is worth five hundred medimn1, and equally to the possessor of three hundred, to the teamster no less than to the peasant who tills the boundary land for a livelihood, to the galley-

25 Slave and the common labourer alike, to the exempted and to the payer of taxes.

It makes no difference to the god whether a man is an ¢édeoboutades or a newly-bought slave.* And this accessibility to all makes divination very humane; for its simple and artless charac-

3o ter is worthy of a philosopher, and its freedom from violence gives

* Odyssey, iv. 750, 752 (739. 761); cf. xvii. 49 £. 2 Ibid. i. 24. 3 Demosthenes, p. 573. 10.

it sanctity. That it is present everywhere and does not employ water or rock or a chasm in the earth, is its most divine quality, and that through divination of this sort we do not become occupied with one matter only, or lose opportunities through it, this also is the first thing worthy to say of it. For surely no one ever left any important matter he might have in hand, to go home to sleep, to meet a dream by appointment. Time, however, which the living being must spend on his nature, inasmuch as our being in the waking state is insufficient to the support of its energy, time, I say, has come to convey to men, as the proverb has it, ‘the by-work which is greater than the work’, for it links the desirable with the inevitable and well-being with being itself. As to these forms of foreknowledge, on the other hand, which come to us through all manner of instruments, we must be content if, having occupied the greater part of life, they make some concession to its remaining needs and activities. If you were to give yourself up to any of these things, you would scarcely find divination of use to you for your purpose, forit is not every place or every season in which one can receive the equipment for the initiation, nor is there every facility for carrying about with you the necessary implements. To speak of nothing else but those things with which the prisons were lately congested, they are loads for a wagon or a ship’s hold. Combined with this there are other elements in the initiation, namely registrars and witnesses.‘ For this would be a more accurate statement, since our time has made many denunciations through those who serve the laws, by whom once betrayed, such initiations become matters for the gaze and the hearing of an unholy mob.

Thus, in addition to the baseness of stooping to such practices, it is, I am persuaded, a course hateful to the god. For not to await voluntarily any one’s coming, but to set him moving by pressure and leverage, this is like the employment of force,

1 Cf. De Prov. 1269, B. 7.

a thing which even when it has happened among men, the legislator has not allowed to pass unpunished. In addition to all these points, difficult enough to those who seek after the future in this way, there is also the chance of interruption of their activity, s and to those who go abroad, the abandonment of the art; for it is no small matter, when moving everywhere, to pack and convey the properties necessary for its practice. Of divination by dreams, each one of us is perforce his own instrument, so much so that it is not possible to desert our oracle there ro even if we so desired. Nay, even if we remain at home, she dwells with us; if we go abroad she accompanies us; she is with us on the field of battle, she is at our side in the life of the city; she labours with us in the fields and barters with us in the market place. The laws of a malicious government do not forbid her, nor would they 15 have the power to do so, even if they wished it, for they have no proof against those who invoke her. For how then? Should we be violating the law by sleeping? A tyrant could never enjoin us not to gaze into dreams, at least not unless he actually banished sleep from his kingdom; and it would be the act of a fool to wish for 20 that which is impossible of fulfilment, and of an impious man to make laws which should be contrary to nature and to God. To her then we must go, woman and man of us, young and old, poor and rich alike, the private citizen and the ruler, the town dweller and the rustic, the artisan and the orator. She repudiates neither 25 race, nor age, nor condition, nor calling. She is present to every one, everywhere, this zealous prophetess, this wise counsellor, who holdeth her peace. She herself is alike initiator and initiated, to announce to us good tidings ; in such wise as to prolong our pleasure by seizing joy beforehand; to inform against the worst so as to 30 guard against and to repel it beforehand. For whatsoever things of use and of sweetness those hopes, which nourish the race of men,’ hold out to him, and as many

1 Sophocles, Fragment 862 (ed. Nauck?, Leipzig, 1889).

things as fear controls, things ominous and withal gainful, all these things are found in dreams, nor by any other thing are we so enticed towards hope. And the element of hope is so abundant and so salutary in its nature that, as acute thinkers maintain, men would not even be willing to continue life, if it were only to be such as they had at the beginning. For they would forswear life by reason of the terrible misfortunes abounding therein, had not Prometheus? injected hopes into their nature, that drug of constancy, under the influence of which they esteem the anticipated to be more worthy of trust than that which is before their eyes. And these hopes have such force that he who is bound in fetters, whenever he permits the will of his heart to hope, is straightway unbound. He enters the army, straightway becomes a lieutenant, after a little, a captain. He then becomes a general, makes conquests, and sacrifices to the gods; his head crowned with garlands, he gives a banquet, a Sicilian or a Median,? as he pleases; and in truth he is forgetful of his feet as long as he dreams of being a general.

Now all this is the waking state of the dreamer, or the sleeping state of the awakened,’ for both are concentrated upon the same underlying state, to wit the imaginative nature, and whenever we wish toconvert this into images, this one benefit is always at hand; good cheer anoints our life and, flattering our soul with illusive hopes, lifts it aloft from the perception of things ill to be borne. And when it spontaneously presents hope to us, as happens in our sleeping state, then we have in the promise of our dreams a pledge from the divinity. Thus any one who has prepared his mind to enjoy those greater things which the dream state held out to him, has twice profited, for that first he had delighted in these things beforehand, and that secondly he is in a position to use

1 Cf. Aesch. Prometheus, 252: 2 Cf. Thucyd. i. 130; Aristoph., frag. 216 (0.C.T.) ; Plat. Leges, 695 B. 5 Cf. Aelian, Varia Historia, xiii. 29.

them wisely, when they have come his way, because of his previous examination of them, as things which befit his life. Thus Pindar praised hope in song, when he said concerning a happy man, that ‘with him liveth sweet hope, the nurse of youth, 5 the fosterer of his heart, hope who chiefly ruleth the changeful mind of man’.! One would say that no allusion is made here to the false hope which in a waking state we mould for ourselves, but all the words of Pindar in this passage are praises of only a small part of dreams. Now the divination of dreams which follows up 1o the phenomenon with scientific methods gives us a stronger hope, and from this it seems not to belong to the slighter class. And so the Penelope of Homer assumes that there are two gates of dreams, and makes half of them deceptive dreams, only because she was not instructed in the matter. For if she had been versed in their 15 science, She would have made them all pass out through the gate of horn. As it is, she has been represented as guilty of ignorance about her very sight, for she distrusted it without reason.

‘The geese are the wooers, and I that bird, the eagle, I am Odysseus.’?

20 He was under the same roof as she, and it was to him that she was babbling in the vision. I seem, therefore, to hear Homer say in such words as these, that it is not right to despair of dreams, and that we should not confuse the weakness of the interpreter with the nature of the visions themselves, nor is Agamemnon in the

25 right when he brings a charge of deception against dreams, for he erroneously interprets this prophecy concerning victory:

‘Bade thee call up then to arms the flowing-haired, the Achaeans, Summoning all their force : thou mayst capture the wide-wayed city.”

He advances indeed to take the city without striking a blow, 30 because he has misinterpreted the phrase, ‘with all their forces’,

1 Pindar, Fragment 214, Schroeder. 2 Odyssey, xix. 548. 3 Iliad, ii, 11 f. 2878.2 P

which means that he might take it, if he armed all the Greeks, even to the last man, whereas Achilles and the Myrmidon phalanx were out of the fighting, and they were the bravest of the army.

Let this suffice for my encomium on divination, and let us dismiss the subject.

g. Yet I have narrowly missed incurring a charge of ingratitude ; for while I explained just now that it (¢.e., divination by dreams) is a good thing wherewith to journey or stay at home, to trade or command troops, and that it helps all men and all things, yet Ihave never made public what it has done for me personally. Certainly no other thing is so well calculated to join in man’s pursuit of wisdom ; and of many of the things which present difficulties to us awake, some of these it makes completely clear while we are asleep, and others it helps us to explain. And something of this sort happens. At one moment one seems like a man asking questions, at another the same man discovering and in process of thought. It has frequently helped‘ me to write books, for it has prepared the mind and made the diction appropriate to the thought. Here it cuts out something, there it brings in new matter instead. It has befallen me already to be admonished by it also in respect of the whole style of my language, when it runs riot and flames up with novel forms of diction, in emulation of the archaic Attic, which is foreign to us, and this by the agency of a god who, at one moment tells me something, and again what something means, and at another shows me how to smooth down the excrescences growing out of my language. Thus it has restored my diction to a state of sobriety, and has castigated my inflated style. Moreover when I am engaged in the chase, it has suggested to me stratagems of the hunter’s art against those wild beasts who show skill alike in running and hiding; and when in weariness I have been on the point of abandoning the quest, the dream

1 An unregistered sense of the word ouvefepyd{oua:, demanded by the context.

~“

Oo

has enjoined upon me a blockade of the quarry, and has promised

me fortune on an appointed day, so that we have slept in the open

more happily and with confidence. And when the day appointed

has come and fortune is with us at last, it has shown us swarms of s netted game and of wild beasts that have fallen to our spears.

My life has been one of books and of the chase, except what time I spent as an ambassador. Would that I had not been compelled to see three unspeakable years lost to my life! But even in them I derived the greatest profit from divination, and that on many

zo occasions. For plots directed against me it made ineffective, plots of ghost-raising sorcerers. It exposed these to me, saved me from them all, and helped me in the management of public office in the best interest of the cities, and it finally placed me, more undaunted than was ever any Greek, on terms of intimacy with 15 the emperor.

One man may prefer one, another man another (system of divination), but dream divination is present to all, the good genius to every man, and one that contrives something for the minds of the awakened also. In this way is a soul a wise possession, that it

201s free from a whole flood of vulgar sensations which attract to it extraneous matter of every sort. Whatever ‘ideas it has, and however many things it receives from the mind, all these, when left to itself, it makes over to those who are inclined towards that which is within, and it ferries across to them whatsoe’er comes

25 from the godhead. For as it is itself of such a character, a cosmic god is also associated with it, from the fact that its nature comes from the same source.

10. Such categories of dreams, then, are more divine, and are either quite clear and obvious, or nearly so, and in no wise stand 30 in need of the diviner’s science. But they may come to the help only of such men as live according to virtue, whether that be acquired by wisdom or engrained by habit, and if at a given

moment they should come to any other, it would be with difficulty, though they might so come.

It is not for some trifling purpose that a dream of this higher order will come to the chance recipient. Further, a frequent and avery widely shared class will bethe enigmatic. To this the science of divination must be applied, for its genesis was, so to speak, strange and portentous, and as it has sprung from such sources, its development is most obscure. Now its character is as follows. From all that nature possesses, all things that are, that have come into being and that shall be (since this too is a phase of existence), from all these things, I say, images flow and rebound from their substance. For if each perceptible thing is form coupled with matter, and if we discover an escape of matter in the combination, reasoning shows that the nature of the images also is canalized, so that in both cases perceptible things renounce the dignity of real being. Now the imaginative pneuma is a powerful reflecting mirror of all the images that flow off in this way.’ For, wandering in vain and slipping from their base, on account of the indefiniteness of their nature, and because they are recognized by no being of real existence, whenever these fall in with psychical pneumata, the which are images indeed, and have a seat fixed in nature, then they lean upon them and take their rest as though at their own hearthstone. Of those things, therefore, which have come into being, inasmuch as they have already passed into the activity of existence, the images sent forth are distinct, until in the fullness of time they become faint and evanescent. Of existing things, inasmuch as they are still standing, the images are more tenacious of life and more distinct, but those of future events are more indefinite and indistinguishable. For they are the advanced waves of things not yet present, efflorescences of unfulfilled nature,

1312 aS it were, riddles of closely stored seeds, skipping away and

darting out.

1 Plutarch, Jsis and Osiris, pp. 383 F, 384 A.

=

Oo

Thus also art is needed with a view to coming events, for the images which proceed from them are only shadowed, and the symbols are not as clear as in the case of already existing things. Nevertheless they are of a wonderful nature, even as they stand,

s wonderful in that they have come into existence from things that have not yet existed.

11. But it is high time that we should say of this art how it may help us. The best way is to prepare the divine pneuma in such wise that it may be worthy of the direction of mind and of God,

1o and not be a recipient of obscure energies. And the best culture is the one leading through philosophy, which brings a calm from passions, for when once disturbed by these the pneuma is occupied, as it were a territory; and through a wise and temperate life, one that least maddens the animal nature and that has least tendency

15 to bring it into the last body. For turmoil would reach even to the first body, but this ought to be kept unperturbed and unmoved. But since this is an easy prayer for every one to join in, but is of all things the most difficult to co-operate in attaining, then as we wish sleep to be unprofitable to none, come now, let us seek

20a definition even for indefinable things; in a word, let us put together an art of divining dream-images. Now it is something in this wise. When mariners sailing the sea come suddenly upon a rock, and presently disembarking see a city of men, as often as they see the saine rock, they will take it as a sign of the city. And

2§ just as when, in the case of generals, we know from the scouts that they themselves will appear, though we do not see them (for that from the same indication they have always in the past appeared on the scene); so on each occasion we obtain from the dreamimages a signal of the activity of coming events.

30 For these are forerunners of those same things, and like things are forerunners of like. Therefore it is the skipper’s fault if, when the same rock becomes visible, he fails to recognize it, or is unable

to say to what land the ship is moving; and as such a man sails without a chart, in the same way the man who has often seen the same sight, if he fails to observe of what experience or fortune or event it is prophetic, such a man makes as foolish a use of his life as does the skipper in question of his ship. Thus 5 we predict storms in a time of perfect atmospheric peace, the moment we see haloes about the moon, because on many occasions when we have observed this appearance a tempest has

followed.

“When that a halo is single, then mayst thou foretell calm and wind- ro storms;

Broken the halo, then know that ’tis wind; when it fadeth, calm weather.

Once that the moon is surrounded by haloes twain, a storm cometh,

And should that ring grow to triple encirclement, storms rage the 15 greater ;

And ever greater, if darkened; yet greater, if broken the halo.’*

Aristotle and reason assert that in every case sense-perception creates memory, Memory experience, experience in turn science. So then let us tread the path to dreams. To this end many books 20 have already been collected by certain men, devoted to such observation. But for my part, I laugh at all these books and 1313 think them of little use. For not like the last body, which is a combination of associated elements, can it (divination) accept a (system of) art and logic altogether conformable to its nature, 25 inasmuch as the body generally experiences the same results from the same causes, because the difference between bodies of like nature is small, and that one amongst them which is contrary to nature is not diseased without our knowledge, nor do we adopt such a standard as this. This is not the case with the imaginative pneuma. In the first nature also one thing differs from another, because one thing 1 Aratus, Phaenom. 812 ff. (Mair, p. 442).

Kit

belongs appropriately to one sphere, another to another, in proportion to the extent of the mingling.

‘Happy are they of a truth, nay happiest are they of all those

Souls whosoever are poured adown upon earth from high heaven ;

5 And they are happy, they also, although no renown be their portion, So many as from thyself, Oh Sovran, who shinest resplendent, Spring into life e’en from Zeus and from mighty Necessity’s spindle.’ ?

Now this is what Timaeus set forth darkly, when he assigned to each soul its proper star; but those souls which left their 1o proper nature, by loving to dwell in the region of matter, one of them more, another less, each of these, for as much as it has been unfortunate in its inclination, has sullied its pneuma. In this plight such souls take up their abode in bodies, and their whole life is passed in error, and in a disease of the pneuma, 15 a disease unnatural to the latter on account of its original nobility, although natural to the animal being (for that itself was animated through a pneuma of this sort) unless it be that its nature is the grade in which it is enrolled of its own choice, through its practice of good and evil; for nothing is so versatile as the pneuma. zo How then in the case of things dissimilar by nature, law, and experience, could the same things be revealed by the same images? This is impossible; it could not be. How could troubled and limpid waters, stagnant and moving water be alike affected by the same shape? And if the difference of the troubled water at one 25 place and another be a difference of colour, and the movements show themselves in various configurations, in this way alone would it be one in character, namely in always diverging from the clear-cut image. Now if such a difference exists, if accordingly some Phemonoe,? or somebody’s Melampus,’ or any individual you 30 please, pretends to make some general definition and arrangement concerning such phenomena, let us ascertain from such men whether it is natural that the plane mirror, the distorted, and

1 Unidentified lines. 2 Strabo, ix. 3, 5. + Herodotus, ii. 49.

that made from dissimilar materials, should reflect a like image of the thing shown. Such men as these have not even done, I think, any philosophical thinking at all on the nature of the pneuma, although that which is proper to it, in whatsoever state it may be, they consider to be a rule and standard for everything. 5 Now for my own part, I do not deny that there is an element of likeness in dissimilar things; but I affirm that the obscure becomes all the more obscure by dispersion. The image of the thing which leaped out prematurely was, I presume, even in the beginning difficult to find out. It is even more difficult in an individual ro character to capture that which is like a general image.

12. For this reason we must dismiss the idea that all men are 1316 under the same laws; rather must each man hold himself as material for the art. Let him inscribe on his memory the affairs in which he has been involved, and the nature of the visions 15 which have preceded them.

Mastery in the art is acquired without difficulty where necessity is involved in the practice. The need reminds one of the practice, and especially on every occasion that it is well off for material. For what could be more abundant than dreams, and 20 what more fascinating? These induce even fools to pay heed to them. It would therefore be shameful for those who have lived ten years beyond adolescence to stand in need of any other diviner, shameful that they should not have accumulated an abundant store of technical principles. It would be a wise 25 proceeding even to publish our waking and sleeping visions and their attendant circumstances; the wise thing to do, I say, unless the culture of the city is like to be too rustic for so novel an enterprise. We shall therefore see fit to add to what are called ‘day books’ what we term ‘night books’, so as to have records to 30 remind us of the character of each of the two lives concerned ; for our argument already laid it down that a certain life exists in

imagination, at one moment better, at another worse than the intermediate, according to the relation of the pneuma to health and disease. If in this way, therefore, we make profitable the observation by which the art is developed, and if nothing slips

5 our memory, in other respects also the result will be a refined pastime; it will be paying oneself the compliment of a history of one’s waking and sleeping moments.

As to those who occupy themselves with public speaking, I do not know any other foundation to replace this as a compre-

10 hensive basis for exercise in the power of speech ; for if the sophist of Lemnos’ says that the day books are good teachers of effective oratory on every subject, for that they do not overlook matters of lesser importance, but compel one to go through the trivial and the serious alike, is it not worth while to value night books as

15 a subject for oratory?

Any one can see how great the work is, on attempting to fit language to visions, visions in which those things which are united in nature are separated, and things separated in nature are united, and he is obliged to show in speech what has not been

20 revealed. It is no mean achievement to pass on to another something of a strange nature that has stirred in one’s own soul, for whenever by this phantasy (of dreaming) things which are expelled from the order of being, and things which never in any possible way existed, are brought instead into being—nay, even

25 things which have not a nature capable of existence, what contrivance is there for presenting a nameless nature to things which are per se inconceivable? Again, it (the phantasy) neither makes these forms appear numerous and all present at the same moment, nor yet does it present them after an interval, but exactly as the

30 dream itself might have them and pass? them on to us; for we believe whatever it wills us to believe. To survive at all and without cutting a sorry figure amidst all this, would be proof of a

1 Philostratus. 2 Reading dpéyos rd. sia Q

masterly rhetoric. It conducts itself wantonly even against our understanding itself, becoming the cause of something more than thought. For we are not indeed insensible to the visions; rather are our approbations and partialities strong, and not least our detestations. And the many trickeries that are bound up with 5 this, attack us in our sleep. Pleasure is at that moment most of all a thing full of charm, such as to impart to our souls loves or hatreds even in the waking state. If any one were to utter no lifeless words, but rather to accomplish that for the sake of which the discourse was seriously undertaken, he would need stirring to language to put his auditor into the same condition and amidst 1317 the same thoughts as himself.

Now in dreams one conquers, walks, or flies simultaneously, and the imagination has room for it all; but how shall mere speech find room for it? So a man sleeps and dreams; he sees 15 a dream, and arises from it still sleeping, as he thinks, and shakes off his dream while still recumbent. He philosophizes a little on the vision that has appeared to him, according to his knowledge ; and this is a dream, but the other is a double dream. Accordingly he believes it not, and thinks that now he is awake and that what 20 appears to him is really alive. Forthwith a fierce struggle ensues, and a man dreams that an attack is made on himself, then that he has left all behind and is waking up, again that he has made trial of himself and has discovered the deception. In some such way must the sons of Aloeus be suffering punishment for piling up the 25 mountains of Thessaly against the gods.‘ But there is no law of Adrastea? in the way of the sleeper, to forbid him from rising from earth more happily than Icarus, from soaring above the eagles, or reaching a point above the loftiest spheres themselves. So one looks steadily upon the earth from afar, and discovers a land not 30 visible even to the moon. It is also in his power to hold converse

1 Otus and Ephialtes, who attempted to pile Ossa on Olympus and Pelion on Ossa. Odyssey, xi. 315. 2 Cf. Syn. Ep. 4, p. 85 of my translation.

with the stars and to meet the unseen gods of the universe. That which is difficult to describe then takes place easily, namely that the gods are visibly manifest, nor do the gods feel even a particle of jealousy. The dreamer has not even descended to the earth s after a short interval; he is already there. Nothing is so characteristic of dreams as to steal space and to create without time. Then the sleeper converses with sheep and fancies their bleating to be speech, and he understands their talk. So new and so extensive a wealth of subjects is there for one who has the 10 courage to let loose his language upon them.

13. I even think that myths take their authority from dreams, as those in which peacock, fox, and sea hold converse. But these are small things compared with the independence of dreams. And although myths are a very small part of dreams, nevertheless they

1s were approved by the sophists as a preparation for the work of eloquence. And for these men to whom the myth is the beginning of their art, the dream ought to be its appropriate end. And there is this in addition, that one has not worked the tongue in vain, as in the case of myths, but that he has become wiser in judgement. Let 20 every man, then, with leisure and ease proceed to write a narrative of whatsoe’er happens in his waking and sleeping states. Let him spend some of his time on this. Of the time so spent the greatest help will be found in his knowledge of letters. Let him put together the art of divination which we have extolled, than which 25 nothing could be of more varied service to him. Above all we must not discard even the style, which follows in the wake of subjectmatter, for to the philosopher this would be mere child’s-play, in which the tension of the string would be relaxed, even as the Scythians deal with their bows. And let us recommend it to 30 the orator as the summit of his eloquence. Of a truth they do not seem to me to employ their powers opportunely upon Miltiades 1 Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 247 A.

and Cimon,' and also on certain nameless persons; again, on rich 1320 and poor opposed to one another in politics, on which matters I have seen even old men disputing with their colleagues in the lecture-room. True, the two sat there with all the high seriousness of philosophy, and each tugged at his beard, that as far as one could 5 guess weighed a talent. All this dignity did not prevent them from indulging in abuse and anger, or from tossing their hands about wildly, the while they delivered interminable speeches on behalf of men, their intimate friends, as I supposed at the time, but who, as the teachers of new branches were not slow to inform 1o me, really neither existed, nor had ever been born; not to speak of their being intimate friends, they had not even any existence in nature. What state could anywhere exist of such a sort as to accord to a chief the privilege of killing a political enemy, and if at ninety years of age one is engaged in fighting a phantom, to 15 what season does one postpone truth of speech? In fact these men do not seem to me to understand even the word ‘practice’, because it professes to work with another end in view, but consider the training to be an end in itself, and they are delighted with the road, as if it were the goal to which they were proceeding, 20 for they have made the training a contest. It is just as if any one who had sparred in the palaestra should demand that (his practice) be heralded abroad as the pancration at Olympia.

So complete a drought of thought and such a deluge of words have possessed these men that some of them who are able to 25 speak, have nothing worth saying; they must needs take delight in themselves, like Archilochus and Alcaeus, each of whom spent his eloquence on his own private life. Yet the course of time preserves the memory both of their sorrows and their joys, for they have not produced words hanging in the void on artificial 30 themes, like this young and wise generation. Nor have they accorded their own proper virtue to others, as did Homer and

2 Plutarch, Cimon 18.

Stesichorus, who made the heroic race more glorious by their poems (and we have profited by their zeal for virtue), but have been so completely neglected in themselves that we are unable to say anything about them except that they were great poets.

s Whosoever therefore aspires to be spoken of by man in the future, and is conscious of the power to create immortal works on the tablets, let him courageously follow our lawless style of composition. Then let him commend himself to time: it is a noble guardian whenever anything divine is entrusted to it.

CONSTITUTIO

INASMUCH as I have not chosen a philosophy that stands aloof from public life, and inasmuch as the religion that most cherishes humanity urges us to acquire a character devoted to the common

1576 weal, I have given ear to your summons, and I am glad to know

the reasons which have brought the two cities so speedily into agreement. For I think it will be profitable totthem, both now and in the future, that they are at once grateful and show their gratitude towards those who initiated kind actions. I welcomed therefore the united expressions of the people and at the same time I extolled all individual speakers with praise. But I too must needs be of the company of eulogists, and this also becomes me more than all others. I even consider that I myself owe thanks to those who have conferred any benefit, on behalf of every one, whether an individual or a city. For how can the man whose duty it is to pray for the common good, fail in gratitude to him who has added to it by his military service and the rest of his administration? How can I fail to treat with all honour the man who has throughout laboured with the sweat of his brow, that I may obtain the object of my prayers, that the accursed barbarians should perish evilly, in evil wise? It was I indeed that prayed to God, but it was the hands of Anysius that carried out God’s will. Of the cavalry who attacked us the other day, over a thousand in number, not the fifth part survives, say those who have suffered. They themselves yet live and have counted the fallen. These results, too, have been attained with no great army to lead the way; but the men who fought along with them numbered forty. I will say nothing derogatory to the cavalry and infantry we are supporting, but he, Anysius, thinks that we ought to use the Unnigardae for everything. The rest of his

CONSTITUTIO 361

forces, numerous as they were, he did not even lead out to be spectators of the prowess of others. These men can carry out the military plans of this chief only. He is their comrade in arms and captain; he is their fellow-soldier and general. s With them as an armed guard he runs a course through the country. He appears quickly everywhere, and he conquers whereever he appears. If there were more of these troops in addition to the two hundred that we have, I boldly declare that with the help of God this young leader would transfer the war to the enemy’s ro country. We shall have to ask for two hundred Unnigardae, with Anysius as general, if we are to bring back our kinsmen from the land of the barbarians. Would that I might live to see a division of spoils taken from their bodies, and the erstwhile master of barbarian captives doing 15 his turn as a slave! It was easy enough to pray for this a day or or two ago, but now we may even hope for it. Trustworthy facts before our eyes have become pledges of our expectations. To achieve this, therefore, Anysius must take the field at the head of two hundred Unnigardae. This man has both the nature and the 20 training which fit him to handle the Unnigardae. He has the faculty of equipping them completely and of keeping them in hand. The Unnigardae with Anysius are the hands of Rome. The forty we have with us I could praise for their strength quite apart from him, but I would not answer for their judgement. Let an am- 25 bassadorial report be sent concerning him, requesting troops and an extension of time for this noble fellow. And what a man, too, in other respects! Was it not he who brought to an end the war we had in time of peace, one almost more severe than the barbarian war, proceeding as it did from the indiscipline of the soldiers and 30 the cupidity of the officers? To him alone of the many generals is it due that a civilian who has been wronged can now raise his voice louder than a soldier’s. Who can be described as incorruptible? Is it not he who makes small case even of lawful gains

362 CONSTITUTIO

of his own? Who could be more religious than he who makes a

beginning with God in every word and deed? In return for all 1577 these gifts we may all of us here present pray that a long and

comfortable old age may be continued to him, and that his virtue

may increase as the years go by.

I FoR one do not know what I ought to say about the misfortunes that are happening before our very eyes, for they who must needs lament have no time for words, nor could words be commensurate with the events. Nay, even the power of weeping

s has failed some men, so terrified are they by the magnitude of the evils befalling them. But since God hath regard to those that lament, and since they who wield the sceptre of the Romans ought, themselves also, to know this, do you write to whomsoever you may of those empowered to bring a statement before the council

10 of the emperor. Let some one announce to this body, in brief, that until the other day Pentapolis was still a province valuable to an emperor. If it is outdistanced in power by otherstates, none the less it is more loyal than those greater in power. This is known to such as have entered into public life with a mind turned upon adminis-

15 tration; and among these, as I hear and am persuaded, the great Anthemius holds the first place. He has seen in how many moments of crisis we have given ready support to our emperor, and of these how many were moments of tyranny. Until the other day the state of Pentapolis belonged to the Romans, who

20 have now, to the nation’s cost, passed her over in enumerating their provinces. Pentapolis has now quite clearly vanished; she has reached a state of extremity. Prolonging her agony to the seventh year, as some animal tenacious of life, she was drawing in and gathering together what breath remained to her.

25 The propitious memory of Anysius has made her time of life a year longer; he it was who used the lances of all men and the hands of the Unnigardae at the critical moment. There came, in consequence, a certain postponement of disaster. For they (the barbarians) were not poured over the country in a compact mass.

298.2 R

They changed their formation to that of marauding bands. They kept retreating and advancing. But after changing their minds when already three times drawn up for battle, the plains are captured by their horse, while our own troops are shut up within walled towns, scattered apart, some here, some there;—the 5 mistake this of Cerialis’ time—and are useless to each other because they are not concentrated. The position of the enemy is therefore brilliant. They who last year were on the alert and always ready

_ to retreat, are now besiegers, are now tearing down the walls of

' villages, are now investing cities with a large force at their disposal. 10 What indeed has not turned out to their advantage! The Ausurians have put on the breastplates of the Thracian cavalry, not of necessity, but to mock at the uniform. Besides these they employed the shields of the Marcomani. The heavy-armed Roman force has degenerated into light-infantry. They find their safety 1; in the compassion of their enemies. I weep for these men, I do not reproach them with the calamity.

What could the Unnigardae have done against a force so vastly superior, and at moments when a small detachment of them encounters its serried masses? They are preserved on the one 20 hand by the grace of God, by their strength and by their training in arins; on the other hand by generalship: for what great harm could they have inflicted on an enemy, if dispatched against them by unwilling leaders? As often as, like young hounds, they got out of hand, these leaders would take them by the throat, and 25 call them in, even before they had sated themselves with their charge and their wild-beast slaughter. And moreover the Unnigardae were in need of a rear-guard and of an army drawn up in order of battle. We had need, I think, of a phalanx, as an efficient sword, the more vigorous part to thrust out with and the stouter 30 to give the second blow. In this way the stroke becomes more disruptive. In any case, the number of these troops is a small one’ wherewith to finish the war, a war which could not be fought to

a finish in such a country as ours. But unless some one can transport Unnigardae into the enemy’s country, we shall need a force of four hundred to protect us against them. Nay, already had we need of such a force and commander before we were so com- 5 pletely routed and before the resources of the enemy had increased to such an extent.

For this final struggle even women joined in the campaign. I have seen, yes I have often seen a woman carrying a sword and suckling infants at the same time. Who does not desire the 10 war that is free from danger? I am full of shame at my fears for myself, for the times and for the Empire. O for the spirit of the Romans of old! Winners of all their battles everywhere, they who united the continents by their victories, are now in danger of losing through a wretched nomadic tribe the Libyan cities, as well as the 15 Greek, and Egyptian Alexandria also! The former loss is greater from the point of view of wealth, the latter is not less so from that of renown, if any one knows the meaning of shame and sets any store on decency. Alas for the audacity with which they have taken the land as if in a drag-net! No mountain is impassable 20 for them nor is any fort secure. They have traversed and explored every country, and they have reduced young and old to slavery.

I have long been listening to Greek historians:

“THE ENEMY LEFT THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN BEHIND AS A TOKEN OF THE DEVASTATION THEY HAD WREAKED IN THE WAR.’

25 Quite otherwise have matters turned out for Pentapolis. For what possession is fairer to the Ausurian than wife and child, that the former may bear him sons, and that the latter, when of age, may serveinthearmy? For the children become fond of those who have filled the place of parents in their upbringing. Alas for the ill-

30 fated colony that we are sending out! Our youth is being carried off captive to augment the armies of our foe ; a people will come with enmity against their native land. A young man will devastate the

land which when still a stripling he cultivated with his father. Now he is on the march, now he is led away. Now the youth of Pentapolis is still in chains. Not one comes to the rescue or is able todoso. And yet they say that the general is full of zeal, but the Alexandrians who direct the campaign there, with evil destiny for 5 Pentapolis, do not allow him to act.

After all, who would blame the guiltless, for whom the burden of years and chronic attacks of disease have invoked our mercy? It would have been easy, no doubt, if we had been fortunate in our generals, to convict of impiety an army insolent and at ro war with God. What sort of sacred or holy thing have they spared? Have they not in many a place in the plain of Barca destroyed newly-dug graves? Isit not by them that the churches of our district of Ampelus have everywhere been burnt and ruined? Did they not employ the sacred communion-tables for 15 the distribution of meat, as though they were profane? The holy vessels, solemnly used for the public libation-ritual, they take away now for the demons of the enemy country.

Which of these things could one permit to reach pious ears? Any one who thinks the citadels which they have destroyed worth 20 remembering, and the utensils, furniture, cattle, and sheep that have been hidden in the ravines, relics of the barbarian brigandage ; such a man amidst so great disasters can scarcely escape the charge of frivolity. And yet they loaded five thousand camels with their booty, and retired with three times their number by the 2s addition of captives, and their host was so much the greater. Pentapolis is dead, extinguished; its end is come, it has been assassinated, it has perished. It has passed entirely out of existence, both for us and for its emperor. For a place from which he will get no return, will be no possession for an emperor, 30

1572 and who shall collect fruit from the desert? As for me, I have no longer a native place to desert. That I am not at sea and seeking an island is, in my case, only from lack of a ship, for I distrust

Egypt. Even there a camel can cross with an Ausurian hoplite on its back. I shall make an island my home, a poor instead of a rich man, an alien less honoured than a citizen of Cythera, for after many inquiries I have now ascertained that Cythera sis opposite Pentapolis, and perhaps the south winds will carry me thither. With their citizens I will live a stranger, a wanderer, and if I attempt to say anything about my great ancestry, they will not give it credence there.

Alas for Cyrene, whose public tablets trace the succession from to Heracles down even to me! for Ishould not be accounteda simpleton in my grief amongst men who know of the degradation of my noble ancestry. Alas for the Dorian tombs wherein I shall find no place! Unhappy Ptolemais, of which I was the last priest to be appointed! The horror of it is ever with me. I can speak no longer, tears over- 1§ power my voice. ... I am full of the thought of what it will mean to abandon the sacred objects. The crew ought already to have put to sea, but when any one calls me to the ship I shall beg leave to delay a little longer. I shall go first to the shrine of God, I shall make the circuit of the altar. I shall drench the most precious 20 pavement with my tears; I shall not retreat from the spot before I have said farewell to that portal and that throne. How many times shall I call upon God and turn to Him, how often shall I press my hands upon the railings! But necessity is a mighty thing and all-powerful. I long to give to my eyes a sleep uninter- 25 rupted by the sound of the trumpet. How much longer shall I stand upon the ramparts, how much longer shall I guard the intervals between the turrets? I am weary of picketing the night patrols, guarding others and guarded myself in turn, I who used to hold many a vigil, waiting for the omens from the stars, 30 I am now worn out watching for the onsets of the enemy. We sleep for a span measured by the water clock, and the alarm bell often breaks in upon the portion allotted me for slumber. And if

I close my eyes for a moment, oh, what sombre dreams!

And to what sort of visions do our cares by day hurry us!

Cessation from troubles is the beginning of troubles. We are in

1573 flight, we are taken prisoners, we are wounded, we are bound in chains, we are sold into slavery. How often have I arisen in joy that I had escaped a master! How often have I arisen gasping 5 for breath and dripping with sweat, abandoning in the same moment sleep and the race I was running with all my might, in flight from an enemy hoplite! For us alone are the words of Hesiod vain, to wit, that ‘Hope remains within the jar’. We are all without courage and bereft of hope. The ‘unliveable’ life of the proverb, to my men, is no other than the one which we are leading. What is the delay? What are we coming to?

Pentapolis has incurred the hatred of God. Weare surrendered to chastisement. There was the locust than which no evil is more complete, there was the conflagration which consumed 15 the crops of three states even before the enemy came. What is the limit to our evils? If the islands afford a respite from these, I shall sail as soon as the sea abandons its evil passions. But I fear that disaster may overtake me first. For the day appointed for the attack is near at hand, with which 'tis said the 20 imperial courier, forerunner of the enemy force, menaced the city. That moment most of all will warn the priests that they must speedily rally to the precincts of God’s temple, if the danger reaches the very walls of the city. I shall remain in my place at the church.

I shall place before me the vessels of holy water. I shall cling fast 25 to the sacred pillars which hold up the inviolate communion table from the ground. There will I sit while I live, and lie when I am dead. I am a minister of God, and perchance I must complete my service by offering up my life. God will not in any case overlook the altar, bloodless, though stained by the blood of a priest 30

“Supreme be thou in words, aye, and in deeds,

O Thalelaeus, whom all learning well befits.’

HOMILY I

I SHALL not make this festal assembly a silent one, nor again one 1561 of many speeches; for, although it is God whom I honour in my speech, by bringing it to a speedy close I shall do what is pleasing to the assembled company. But in order that you may be a partici-

s pant worthy of God in the festival, do not set your hearts on the pleasures of the table, passing from fasting to drunkenness. Offer to God a garlanded goblet of sober mixture. Our God is wisdom and reason. A beaker that confuses reflection, that disturbs the reasoning faculty, is quite alien to true reason. There is

10 a recreation that is befitting to God, and there is one that befits evil spirits. ‘Exult ye in the Lord in fear’. When you feast, he says, be you mindful of God, for it is then that most men slip into sin. When the body is well nourished and grows fleshy, it deflects the soul’s judgement. ‘In the hand of the Lord there is a cup

15 of unmixed wine filled with a mixture, and he pours from this vessel into that, but the dregs of it have not been drained.’? Drink thou of that cup, and thou hast become worthy of the banquet of the bridegroom. That cup is beneficial, full of wine, and once sought, 1s worthy to raise us to Mind. And indeed the passage is

20 quite clear, though many things fall a little short of comprehension. A drinking cup is full of a mixture in unmixed wine. ‘And he poured from this vessel into that’.? If it was of unmixed wine, how is it full of a mixture, and if it is one, how did he pour it from this to that? The words seem to be altogether nonsensical ;

25 not so, however, if really understood. God has no interest in divinely inspired diction. The divine spirit disdains literary pettiness. Dost thou desire to behold the harmony of this discord? Concerning what sort of cup is he speaking? It is the word which we have from God, freely offered by God to men in the Old Testa-

1 Cf. Ps. ii. 11. 2 Ps. Ixxiv. 9.

370 HOMILY I

ment and the New, for by this drink is our soul watered. Inasmuch as it is a word, each of the two is unmixed, for even although a double word it is mixed together, for what has been compounded out of the two is one, a perfection of Gnosis. The Old Testament contained the promise, and the New revealed the apostle, and the s phrase ‘he poured from this into that’ shadows forth the succession of the teachers of the law, that of Moses and that of the Lord, and the cup is one, for one Spirit breathed both on the prophet and the apostle, and like good painters, He sketched out, in days of old, and thereafter exactly portrayed, the parts of the Gnosis, ‘but the 10 dregs of it have not been drained’.

HOMILY II

1564 IT is a holy night that brings light to those that are accursed, a light greater than that wherewith any sun has ever illumined the day. Lo, it is not holy that even the fairest thing upon the earth should be compared to the Creator; but that light which illumines r¢ souls and lit up the perceptible sun is no piece of creation. It exists through the harmony of its present blessedness, that will bless us in the future. If you persevere in this way of thinking you will maintain the soul ina more enviable state for the present, if not for your whole life. At this moment each one of you goes 20 about the city as an announcing messenger. Now believe ye that the words of scripture refer to you, that being on earth ye have a citizenship in heaven.! Beware of missing your deserts, for hard to wash out is the stain that comes after cleansing.

The people of Leontopolis adopted a resolution whose mildness 25 was out of keeping with their own nature. They let each other alone, and indicted their neighbours for illegal action. Until the the other day brothers were invoking the arm of the law against

1 Phil. iii. 20.

HOMILY II 371

brothers, son against father, and father against the family. Perhaps the thing now taken in hand is not really the act of men finally resorting to the ancestral course of mutual extermination ; but while every private individual has his hand against his neighs bour, the city is arrayed collectively against those who are unlucky enough to live near to it. It would be unendurable to them if the pattern of their constitution were not publicly that of an informer, and if it did not slip into the position of a false accuser. That we are in no way guilty, the very accusations furnish clear ro proofs, when we have the good fortune to get the ear of a judge. But we have learnt only to till the soil, not to address law courts. Why then do these men think fit to overstep the limits that have been assigned to them from time immemorial, and come against us, who are more aflame than they. Why do they always sell the rs Surplus to us, who are more parched than they and wronged by our situation? Since there has been no profit this year, they insist that our misfortunes should take its place. This is the object of the writs recently issued, and their decrees have no other aim than this. And they also make a second admission, which it is only just 20 that we should state first of all, and we alone; for it explains their most unjust attempt. For having themselves long ago laid . a foundation for their false accusations, to support their shameless claims to make use of the water that does not belong to them, they have now approached this most august court.

HYMN I

1588 Sounp forth, clear-tongued lyre, after the Teian cadence, after the Lesbian movement ; sing to me in more time-honoured strains a Dorian ode, not one for dainty love-laughing girls or for the adolescence of flowering youths that compelleth desire; for it 1s a sacred travail of divine wisdom and one unsullied that prompts 5 me to strike the strings of my lyre to a divine refrain, and bids me flee from the honied infatuation of earthly loves. What is force and what beauty, what is gold or renown, and what are royal honours as compared with meditations upon God? Let one man be apt in driving horses, another in bending the bow; let another 10 guard his treasure heaps, his golden joy. Another’s glory is the hair that sweeps his neck. Let him be lauded on high for the brightness of his countenance by youths and maidens in their songs ; but may it be my lot to lead a life not noised abroad, a life without display in what concerns other men, but that knows in 15 itself of what pertains to God. May wisdom be ever with me, 1589 wisdom the good guide of youth and of age, wisdom the just mistress of wealth, she who smiling shall easily bear poverty, impregnable to the bitter cares of life. May only so much be mine as shall suffice to make me independent of my neighbour's hut, sufficient that want may not bend me down to dark forebodings. Listen now to the song of the cicada as she drinks the morning dew. See how my lyre-strings cry out unbidden notes, how some prophetic voice flutters about and around me. What melody shall this divine parturition bear unto me? God, the Beginning created 25 of Himself, Guardian and Father of existing things, born without birth, firmly enthroned above the pinnacles of heaven, proud in glory unwaning, God sits steadfast, of unities the pure unity, and the first monad of monads. He hath joined the elements of exalted beings, bringing them to existence in supernatural acts of birth. 3°

~]

Oo

HYMN I 373

From out these the monad itself, rushing on through a first-

engendered form, diffused in unspeakable ways, holds the power

of three summits. But the fountain head which dominates, is

crowned with the beauty of children leaping from out the centre, 5 and again rushing towards the centre therein.

Pause, audacious lyre, I entreat ; pause, reveal not the mysteries to the people at large, mysteries which are celebrated without initiations; go thou and tell of the things here below; silence covereth those above. And now mind is busy with mind’s created

ro universe, for out of this has the good beginning of man’s spirit been divided beyond division. Mind that waneth not, though descending to matter, is the seed of progenitors that reign in right divine, a seed however feeble. But of these, this one whole universal mind, this whole diffused into the whole, turns the vast 15 hollow of the heavens, and keeping guard upon this very whole is ever present, parted into forms diverse. The one is in the convoying of the stars, another turns to the dances of angels, yet another has found an earthly form by a bond descending, and is severed from its parentage. Dark oblivion hath it drunk, and 20 wondereth, in its blind tormenting cares, at the joyless earth. Albeit a God looking on mortal things is within it, there is still a light in the veiled pupils of its eyes, there is some courage even in those who have fallen here below, that summoneth them above, what time that, fleeing from out the waves of mortal life, they enter 25 free from care on the sacred paths that lead to the palace of their Parent. Happy he who fleeing the voracious cry of matter, and rising from earth, urgeth with light bound his footsteps to God. Happy he who after his allotted destiny, after troubles, after 1592 bitter earthly cares, enters on the pathways of mind and beholdeth 30 the deep profound that shineth with divine light. It isa labour to take flight with the whole wings of those desires that lift upwards to the universal Heart. Do thou only confirm thy flight by such flights as transport to the ideal world, and the Father will appear

374 HYMN I

nigh unto thee and will hold out His Hands to thee. For some shaft of light shall leap forth to illumine thy paths, and will unfold to thee the field of mind, the beginning of beauty. Arise, my soul, drink from the fountain that runs with gold. In worship of the Creator ascend thou, and delay not; leave to the earth the things 5 of the earth, and in unison with the Father thou mayest perchance move in harmony with God, thyself divine.

HYMN II

AGAIN light shines forth, again dawn, again day, after the darkness that roams by night. Again make supplication to God, O my heart, in songs of the morning, He who has given light to the ro dawn, who has given stars to the night, the dancing company that encircles the universe. Ether has enveloped the expanse of billowy matter, mounting on the glory of flame, that the queenly moon may divide her last phase. Above the eighth rotation of star-borne whorls a stream bereft of stars drives onwards, hidden rs within its bosom, layers (of matter) in contrary currents, and circles about the great Mind, which bends with grey wings down to the confines of the lordly universe. A blessed silence covers all beyond, an indivisible division alike of the perceptive and the perceived. One is the fountain-head, one the root. Lo, a thrice 20 resplendent shape has blazed forth, for where the profundity of the Father is, there also is the august Son, offspring as it were of the Heart. Wisdom, the Creator of the universe and the unified flame of the Holy Spirit, has shone forth. One fountain-head, one root, did raise up a rich plenty of good things, a progeny that 25 passeth all being, glowing with desire of generation, and the wondrous flames of the blessed in existence burn brightly. Whence there has now entered into the universe a choir of immortal rulers, who sing in songs of the mind the renown of the Creator, and the first conceived form. Near to their benign progenitors an 30

HYMN II 375

ageless army of angels, now looking upon Mind, plucks therefrom the principle of beauty, and again, looking towards the spheres, directeth the deep places of the universe, drawing the world that is above even unto the extreme confines of matter, where nature 5 subsiding, giveth birth to a horde of demons turbulent and full of guile. Thence a hero; thence now a spirit sown as seed through the lands, has filled earthly destinies with life, with cunningly devised forms. All things hang upon Thy Will, and Thou art the root of things ro present, past, future and within. Thou art Father, art Mother, Thou Male, Thou Female, Thou Voice, Thou Silence, of nature the fruitful Nature. All hail to Thee,O King, wherever it be lawful to cry this aloud, Age of ages, Root of the universe. All hail to Thee, Centre of existing things, Monad of numbers immortal, of 15 kings that existed not before thee. Mayest Thou rejoice greatly, mayest Thou rejoice greatly, for it is with God that joy is found. Lend a propitious ear to the hymns of my choirs. Open the light of wisdom, pour down the glorious plenty of a calm life, pour down its shining grace. Drive poverty from our midst, and the zo earthly calamity of wealth. Drive illness from my limbs, the disorderly urge of the passions from my life, and soul-gnawing cares, to the end that the destiny of earth may not weigh down the wings of my soul, but lifting a free pinion, may I dance in the ineffable rites of Thy offspring.

HYMN III

2s AWAKE my soul; give thyself unto sacred songs, lay to rest the stings that are born of matter. Arm thou the mighty impulses of mind. For the King of gods we are weaving a crown, a bloodless offering, libations of poesy. Thee I invoke in song, Thee in the ocean, Thee over islands, on mainlands, in cities and on craggy 3o mountains, Thee when’er I rest the twain feet of my limbs on the

376 HYMN III

far-famed plains, Thee blessed Creator of a universe. Night brings me, Thy minstrel, to Thee, O King, and I lift up to Thee hymns of the day-time, of the morning, of the evening. Thy witnesses are the beams of glittering stars, the courses of the moon, and that mighty witness, the sun, who presideth over the pure stars,

1594 the holy guardian of pious spirits. Lifting up my wing that turns away from far-reaching matter, I have advanced and come to Thy dwelling-place, Thy bosom, rejoicing. And now even unto the sacred enclosure of the Holy Sacrifice am I come, a suppliant. Now a suppliant I come to the crests of famous mountains, and 10 the great ravine of desert Libya, the southern border, which no godless blast of wind sullieth, nor is the foot-print graven thereon of men whose cares are of the town. There, purified of passions, released from desires, ceasing to labour, ceasing to grieve, to rage or to covet, may my soul casting off all these things that cause 15 death, render the hymn that is due unto Thee with a pure tongue and a sanctified mind.

1595 Let earth and upper air be at peace. Let the sea be still, let air be still. Be still, ye gusts of swift winds; be stilled, onslaughts of curling waves, mouths of rivers, outwellings of springs. Let silence 20 hold the caverns of the universe, while these sacred hymns are offered up.

Let the sinuous trend of serpents sink beneath the earth, and that winged serpent also, the demon of matter, he who clouds the soul, rejoicing in images and urging on his brood of whelps against my supplications. Do Thou, O Father, O Blessed One, keep away from my soul these soul-devouring hounds, from my prayer, from my life, from my works. May our heart’s libation be a care to Thy august messengers, wise bearers to Thee of holy hymns. Now am I borne back to the starting-point of sacred poesy. Already 30 does the oracle echo in my mind. Be full of goodness unto me, Blessed One, be full of goodness unto me, Father, if beyond what is ordered, if beyond what is destined, I touch upon that which

Mm

we

HYNN III 377

is Thine. Whose eye is so wise, whose so availing, that it blinketh not when checked by Thy shafts of light? Not even for gods is it lawful to gaze steadfastly on Thy flaming torches, but Mind, falling from Thy pinnacle, is fain to caress whatsoe’er is near to 5 Thee, seeking thus to attain the unattainable, to look upon the light that glitters in Thy untiring profundity ; and so relinquishing unapproachable ways, it fixes the strength of its eye upon the image that first showed itself. Thence plucking flowers of light to be hymns unto Thee, may it stay the blast of fitful winds and ro give thee back Thine own. For what is there, O King, that is not Thine, Father of all fathers, Father of Thyself, Fatherless Ancestor, Son of Thyself, One prior to the One, Seed of existing things, Centre of all things, Mind that wert without substance at the beginning ? Root of the world, Thou the Light, everywhere visible, of primal 15 things, wise Certainty and wisdom’s Fountain, Mind hidden by Thine own bright rays, Eye of Thyself, Master of the thunderbolt, Father of the ages, Immortal, higher than the gods, higher than intellects which thou turnest to one side and the other. Thou the mind’s source of intelligence, the Creator of divine beings, Shaper of 20 the spirit, Nourisher of the soul, Fountain of fountains, Origin of origins, Root of roots. Thou art the Unity of unities, Number of numbers, at once Monad and Number, Mind and the Intelligent, both the knowable and what precedes it, Oneand All, and the One of All, and One before All, that is the seed of all things, the root and 25 the branch, and nature in whatsoe’er is endowed with intelligence, the female element and the male.

The mind initiated in the mysteries says such and such things, moving in harmony the while around Thy awful abysm. Thou art the Generator, Thou the Generated; Thou the Light that shineth,

30 Thou the Illumined; Thou what is revealed, Thou that which is hidden in Thine own beams; the Oneand All, the One Self-contained and dispersed through all things. For Thou wert poured out, ineffable Parent, that Thou mightst beget a child, to wit, far-famed

378 HYMN III

Wisdom, Creator of the world, but so outwelling, Thou dost remain once delivered in the divisions undivided. I sing to Thee, Unity, I sing to Thee, Trinity ; Thou art One being Three, art Three being One; and the intelligible segment holds what has been divided 1597 still indivisible. Thou wert poured out on the Son in Thy wisdom’s 5 Will, and that Will Itself was then born, a nature unutterable, the being pre-existent to matter. It is against divine law to say that a second one has come from Thee, it is against it to say that a third has come from the first. O holy Birth, O unspeakable generation; Thou art the boundary of natural forces, of the ro generating and the generated. I venerate the hidden ordering of intellectual things, but there is some medial element that may not be distributed. Ineffable Offspring of a Father Ineffable, the birth-pang was through Thee, and through the birth-pang Thou didst Thyself appear, showing Thyself together with the Father by 15 the Father’s Will. By the Will of the Father Thou, His Will, art ever of Thyself beside the Father. Even deep-eddying Time knoweth not the inevitable procreations, nor did long ages comprehend the tedious birth. With the Father He was revealed, He that had been for all eternity One that wastocomeinto being. Whohas controlled 20 rashness in regard to unspeakable things? Godless are the audacities of blind mortals with cunningly devised language, but Thou art Giver of light, the light of intellect, and dost bear aloft the minds of holy men away from crooked deceit, that they sink not in the dark shades of matter. 25 Thee, Father of the Universe, Father of the ages, Creator of the gods, it is an act of purity to praise. They who have knowledge praise Thee, O King, and they who govern the world, they of the glittering eyes, the starry intelligences sing Thy praises, Blessed One, as the glorious mass moves rhythmically around them. The 30 whole race of the blessed sings to Thee, they who about the world, 1598 who in the world, within and without the zones guide in their wisdom the fates of the cosmos, protectors they, side by side with the famous

HYMN III 379

pilots whom the chain angelic keeps pouring forth. And the illustrious race of heroes that goeth through the works of men, works of mortal mould, by hidden pathways, (sing praises). And the soul at once steadfast and bent down to the dark-gleaming corners s of the earth (sings praises). Thee blessed Nature hymns aloud, and the offspring of Nature which Thou, Blessed One, urgest on with favouring breezes, drawn from Thy channels and rolling onwards ; for Thou, Leader of immaculate universes, art the Nature of natures: Thou cherishest Nature, birth of mortals, the image of the eternal ro monad, that even the lowest portion of the universe may be allotted an alternative lot. For it was not the divine law that the lees of the universe should contend with the summits. That which has been wholly ordained to the assemblage of real existences shall never perish, but all find their happiness, one from another 15 and each through each. Of perishable things an eternal circle, cherished by Thy breath, places choirs to Thee throughout all things: so doth maternal Nature in her proper colours, in her proper works, embellish them. And out of living things of varied voices she creates one harmony in likeness of sound. All things ao bring to Thee ageless praise, even the dawn and the night, the lightnings, the snows, the firmament, the ether, and the roots of the soil, water, air, all bodies, all spirits, seeds, fruits, the plants and the grasses, roots, herbs, beasts and birds, and shoals of the swimming finny creatures. 2s Behold now also in Thy Libya, in Thy august priesthood, a soul feeble and exhausted, one given up to holy prayers to Thee, but whom a cloud of matter besets. But Thine Eye, O Father, pierces matter, and now my heart, made fruitful with hymns to Thee, has excited my mind with fiery impulses. Do Thou, 300 King, kindle the uplifting beams, and grant, Father, that, fleeing the body, (the soul) may ne’er again descend to an earthly doom. But as long as I remain in the chains of a life that has commerce with matter, may a gentle destiny, O Blessed One, 2878.3 T

380 HYMN III

nourish me. May it not blow adversely, consuming my life with grim cares of the mind, so that I may have no time for the things of God, nor be involved in such cares; but rather fleeing from these, by Thy gifts, may I weave for thee this garland from the sacred meadows. I bring to Thee this praise, Leader of un- 5 sullied worlds, and to Thy wise Son, whom Thou has sent forth from Thy sacred bosom together with wisdom itself. Springing forth from Thee, He remains within Thee, that He may explore all things with subtle breathings, that He may rule the profundities of hoary ages, and direct the feet of a rugged world, even unto the last depth ro of what belongeth to earthly destiny; his light shining in pious hearts, that He may release living mortals from their labours, from their cares, He the Accomplisher of good deeds, the Chaser away of distresses. And why should it be a thing to wonder at, that the Maker of the universe keeps evil destinies from His own works? 15 I come, O Ruler of the great universe, to acquit myself of 1600 a vow made to Thee, even from Thrace, where for three years I dwelt in a way near to the king’s palace in that land. And labours I endured, griefs I endured meet for many tears, bearing on my shoulders my mother-city. The earth was watered with 20 the sweat of my limbs that toiled in the contest day by day, and my couch was moistened with the dropping of tears from my eyelids weeping from night to night. And as many temples as were builded for Thy holy ceremonies, O King, to all these I repaired. There prostrate, a suppliant, I prayed, watering 2. the ground with the dew of my eyelids, that I might not find my journey vain. I supplicated gods that labour, even as many as hold the fruitful plain of Thrace, and those who on the other side rule the Chalcedonian pastures, whom Thou, O King, hast crowned with Thy annunciating beams, to be Thy 30 sacred ministers. The blessed ones have indeed taken to them my supplications, they have engaged in many labours with me. My life was not at that time dear to me because that my father-

HYMN III 38x

land was so tormented ; but Thou, O King, hast lifted it from out itssorrows. O Ruler of the universe, Thou, the Ageless, sustaindest the force of my limbs, when my soul was already failing and my members already breaking up. Thou didst breathe strength into s my wretched soul; a sweet ending to my labours didst Thou find me, O King, and one according to my desire, granting to my works

a repose from long labours. Do Thou, O Blessed One, preserve all these gains for the Libyans for a long roll of time, for the sake of the memory of 10 Thy great goodness, and for the soul that has suffered grievous things. Give moreover to Thy suppliant a life free from harm, deliver me from sufferings, deliver me from diseases, deliver me from cares that bring death; grant Thy servant a life of the intellect. Adjudge me not earthly showers of gold, O King, 1g that may render me without leisure for the things divine, nor let grim poverty attack my house and draw down to earth the meditations of my heart, for both these weigh down the soul to the earth, and both bring forgetfulness of mind, whensoe’er, O Blessed One, Thou offerest not Thy help. O Father, Fountain of pure 20 wisdom, kindle in my mind a flame of intellect out of Thy bosom, ilumine our heart out of Thy strength with a gleam of wisdom. Give this as a symbol of the sacred way to Thee, even Thine own seal. Chase from my life and from my prayer the deadly demons of matter, preserve my body safe and sound from the 25 approach of spiteful violence, and guard in safety my spirit unpolluted, O King. In sooth I carry on me already the darkling stain of Matter, and I am held fast by desires, by earthly chains. But Thou art my liberator, Thou my purifier. Release me from evils, from illness, from fetters. I carry in me Thy seed, the spark of 30 high-born Mind, but a spark falling down to the depths of matter. But Thou hast deposited soul in the cosmos, and through soul hast sown mind in the body, O King. Take pity on thine handmaiden, O Blessed One. I descended from Thee to be a servant

382 HYMN III

of earth, and instead of living as a hireling, I became a bondslave. Matter fettered me with magic arts. For all that, there is still some small strength in the ball of the eye hidden within me, it has not yet extinguished all its might. But a great wave has 1602 broken over me from above, blinding the soul that seeth God. 5

Pity, O Father, Thy suppliant handmaiden, whom longing for devouring matter strangles, when oftimes she strives to ascend by the paths of mind to thee. But do Thou, O King, kindle the lights that lead upwards, do Thou light the gleam and the beacon by augmenting the scanty seed in the noblest part of my mind. ro Enthrone me, O Father, in the strength of the life-bringing life, where nature advanceth not her hand, whence nor-earth, nor the fated spinning of Necessity yet makes me recoil.

May false generation leave Thy servant in flight! Let fire be between me, O Father, and the tumult of the earth. Grant, O 1s Creator, grant unto Thy minister now to spread his wings, the wings of Mind. Now at last let the suppliant soul bear the seal of the Father, a terror to hostile demons, who dart aloft from deep lurking places of the earth to breathe godless impulses upon mortals ; and let this be a sign to Thy pure ministers, who throughout 20 the depths of the august universe are keybearers to the fiery ascents, that they should open wide to me the gates of light, and that while still creeping upon the vain earth, I may not be of its soil. And of the works written in fire give me, even here, fruit as a witness, sure utterances, and as many tokens as cherish the hope immortal 25 in souls.

I repent me of this life of clay. Hence, eyesores of godless mortals, dominations of cities! Hence all-sweetened destinies of perdition,

1603 and grace that is no grace, wherewith the beguiled soul is held fast in bondage to earth, the soul which drank, in its great cowar- 30 dice, oblivion of its own good, until it fell upon envy as its portion For debauched matter has twain parts, and whoso stretches out his hand to the table, to touch the sweet viands, will in sooth

HYMN III 383

greatly lament his bitter lot, when the hostile elements drag him down with them. Verily this law of earthly necessity pours out a life to mortals from two sources, and the one is unmixed and is pure good, a god or things divine. I have been inebriated with 5 the sweet cup, I have touched the lands of evil things, I have fallen into the snare, I have known the fate of Epimetheus.’

So hate I inconstant laws; and I hasten to my Father's carefree meadow. Thither I spread my wings in flight from the twin gifts of matter.

10 Behold me, Thou who dost order the mind’s life. Behold Thy suppliant, a soul upon the earth, striving towards the ascents by mind, and do Thou kindle, O King, the lights that lead aloft, giving unto me light wings. Cut Thou the knot, loose Thou the grip of the twin desires by which artful Nature bends down souls to the

15 earth. Grant to me to escape the destiny of the body and to spring swiftly even to Thy courts, to Thy bosom, whence floweth forth the fountain of the soul. A heavenly drop I am shed upon the earth. Do thou restore me to that fountain whence I was poured forth, a wanderer who comes and goes. Grant me to mingle with

20 ancestral light. And grant that, cared for by Thee, the Father, I may with the kingly choir bear aloft in sanctity the songs of mind. Grant, O Father, that mingled with the light I sink not again into an earthly destiny, but as long as I remain in the chains of a material life, may a kindly fortune, O Blessed One, nurture me!

HYMN IV

25 To Thee I sing, when the sacred day beginneth, to Thee while it waxeth, to Thee when it toucheth the meridian, to Thee when it declineth, and when cometh wondrous night; to Thee, Creator, Healer of souls, Healer of limbs, Giver of wisdom, Banisher of diseases, Giver to souls of a life free from trouble, a life which

1 Brother of Prometheus and husband of Pandora.

384 HYMN IV

earthly care, mother of griefs, mother of sufferings, trampleth not under foot. May my life remain to me purified of these, that in song I may tell of the hidden root of all things, nor be turned away from God by delusions that lead astray!

Thee, Blessed One, I sing to, Lord of the universe, and let earth 5 be silent. Let all that the universe possesses keep sacred silence, while hymns and prayers are addressed to Thee, for they are Thy works, O Father. Let the whistling of the winds be still, the rustling of trees, the song of birds; let the ether be at peace, let the air be at peace, listening to the strain, and let the gushing of waters be noiseless now throughout the earth. Let the demons now flee from my pure prayer, they that delighting in the realms of darkness and haunting the tombs, impede holy songs, but the good, the happy servants of the all-understanding Creator, as many as occupy the depths and heights of the universe, let those hear 15 benignly the hymns that are of the Father, and benignly let them bear my prayers on high. Unit of units, Father of fathers, Beginning of beginnings, Fountain of fountains, Root of roots, the Good

1605 of good things, Star of stars, Universe of universes, Idea of ideas, profound Beauty, hidden Seed, Father of ages, Father of unspeak- 20 able worlds of Mind, whence a divine breath ever distilling, floating over masses of body, it now kindleth a second universe. Thee, Blessed One, I sing to with my voice, and I sing unto Thee alike with silence, for as many things as Thou hearest of the voice, Thou hearest also out of the silence of the mind. And I sing to 25 the Offspring, the First-born, the First-appearing.

Most glorious Offspring of the ineffable Father, Thee, Blessed One, I hymn, together with the great Father, and the travail of the Father over Thee, that Counsel of generation, the medial Beginning, the Holy Spirit, Centre of the Creator, Centre again 30 of the Son, Mother, Sister and Daughter to Thyself, delivered of the secret Root. For in order that the Father might be poured out upon the Son, that very outpouring found a shoot, and stood

on]

Oo

HYMN IV 385

in the midst, God, descended from God, in a Son who was God, and in the renowned outpouring of an immortal Father, the Son found a shoot. Thou art Unity, Trinity withal, a Unity that dost endure, and a Trinity in very truth Thou art. And the intellectual

§ division retains still undivided that which is partitioned, but the Son, though he hath leaped forth, remains with the Father and yet conducts, without, the Father’s business, bringing down to the worlds the beatitude of life, whence the Word Himself has it. This Word I hymn, in unison with the great Father. The Mind ro of the ineffable Father brings Thee to birth, and Thou, so conceived, art the Word of the Creator, first to leap forward from out the primal Root, and the Root of all things that came after Thy illustrious birth. An ineffable Unity, the Seed of all things, hath begotten Thee, the Seed of all things; for Thou art in all things, 15 and through Thee the highest, the medial, and the lowest nature, enjoy the good gifts of the generative life from God the Father. For Thee an ageless sphere rolls its untroubled course. Under Thy direction the seven planets dance in harmony in the powerful revolutions of the great vault, and the many lights of the universe 20 adorn the one dome of sky by thy Will, most renowned Offspring ; for Thou, running round about the heavenly deep, holdest together unbroken the course of ages, and under thy sacred ordinances, Blessed One, in the cavities of the unsoundable ether, dwells the company of gleaming stars. Thou dost apportion their 25 tasks in the heavens and the air, on the earth and in the world below, and Thou allottest unto them their life. Thou art the Master of Mind, and to the gods their Ordainer, as to mortals also, as many as have quaffed the showers of Mind’s destiny. Thou art the Giver of Soul to those whose life is dependent on the soul, 30 and art tireless in nature. A blind offspring of soul hangs from Thy chain, and as many things as are deprived of all breath pluck from Thy bosom a bond of union, carried by Thy power from the ineffable Fatherly Bosom, the hidden unity, whence the stream

386 HYMN IV

of life flowing onward is carried by Thy power even unto earth, through trackless worlds of mind. Thence the visible cosmos, the form of the world of mind, receives it, a descending stream of 1607 blessings. This (visible cosmos) had a second sun, the progenitor with shining eyes of a later shining light, the guardian of that 5 matter which comes into being and perishes, a Son who is the perceptible impression of Mind, the purveyor of what good things are born in the universe, born through thy will, most august Offspring, Father unknowable, Father ineffable, Unknowable to Mind, Unutterable inspeech. Thou art the Mind of mind, the Soul of souls, the ro Natureof natures. Lo, I bend the knee before Thee, a servant, I cast myself upon the ground, a blind suppliant ; but do Thou, the Giver of light, of the light of Mind, take pity, O Blessed One, on a suppliant soul; chase away diseases, chase away cares that gnaw the soul, and chase away the shameless hound of the nether world, the demon of earth, from my soul, from my prayer, from my life, from my works. Let that demon remain outside of my body, of my spirit, and of all that is mine. Let him flee, let him leave me, 1608 the demon of matter, the power of sufferings, who builds his fortress wall against the path that leadeth above, who violateth 20 the aspirations that seek God; and give me a companion, O King, a partner, a sacred messenger of sacred power, a messenger of prayer illumined by the divine light, a friend, a dispenser of noble gifts, a guard of my soul, a guard of my life, a guard over prayers, a guard over deeds, and one to save the body purified of disease, 2.5 to save the spirit purified of shame. And bring to my soul oblivion of its passions, that the soul’s winged flight may also enrich the earth-nourished life with hymns of Thee, to the end too that I may complete the life that comes with destiny after the chains that weigh us down to earth, a life purified of matter, even unto thy 30 courts and unto thy Bosom whence outwelleth the fountain of the soul. And do Thou extend to me thy Hand; do Thou call, Blessed One, do Thou lift up from matter a suppliant soul.

=

HYMN V

LET us sing to the Son of the Bride, the Bride not wedded for destined wedlock with man. The ineffable designs of the Father produced the birth of Christ. The sacred travail of a Bride revealed the form of Man, who came bringing a fountain of

s light to mortals; and this ineffable Offspring knows the Root of the ages. Thou Thyself art the Light from the Fountain-head, the ray that hast shone along with the Father, that, having broken through murky matter, dost shine in pious souls. ‘Tis Thou Who art the Founder of the universe, the Fashioner of the

ro spheres of famous stars, the Founder of the centres of the earth, and Thou art of Thyself the Saviour of men. For Thee the Titan drives his horses, the unquenchable source of morning, for Thee the horned moon dissipates the shades of night. For Thee also are fruits begotten, and herds do graze. Sending out from Thy inef-

1§ fable source a life-giving splendour, Thou fillest with nourishment the interlaced roots of the universe. Out of Thy profundities have blossomed forth light and mind and soul. Take pity upon Thy daughter imprisoned in mortal limbs and the material limits of destiny. Preserve Thou the force of my limbs unscathed

20 from the ravage of disease. Grant persuasiveness to my words and glory to my deeds, even such as may become the traditions of Cyrene and Sparta; and may my soul, untrodden by grief, draw to itself a gentle nourishing life, straining a pair of eyes upon Thy Light, so that escaping from matter I may hasten on the unchang-

25 ing paths, a fugitive from the sufferings of earth, to mingle with the Fountain-head of the soul. Mayst Thou achieve such an unstained life to Thy minstrel, whensoe’er I send to Thee a song, and glorify Thy Root, the greatest glory of the Father, and the Spirit that shareth the throne midway between the Root and the Branch,

30 and in singing the might of the Father, I lull to rest, with hymns to Thee, the glorious travail of my soul. Hail, Source of the Son,

2878.3 U

388 HYMN V

hail, Form of the Father, hail, Throne of the Son, hail, Seal of the Father, hail, Strength of the Son, hail, Beauty of the Father, hail, Breath undefiled, Centre of the Son and of the Father, mayst Thou send to me with the Father the mistress of divine gifts, to water the wings of my soul. 5

HYMN VI

IN unison with the Holy Self-engendered Fountain that surpasseth the unspeakable unities, I will crown with wise garlands of hymns, God, the glorious Son of the eternal God, One Offspring that leapt forth from One Father, Whom the indescribable birthpang of the Fatherly Will has made manifest, a Son out of His ro unknowable Bosom, the birth-pang which has displayed the fruits of the Father’s begetting, and, in bringing them to light, has been revealed Mind, fixed in the medial. And so there remain in the Fountain, poured round about, the wisdom of the Father’s Mind, the splendour of His beauty. To Thee, the Engendered, the ts Father has granted to engender. Thou art the hidden Seed of the Father; for the Father gave Thee to universes as their beginning, that forms might be brought down to material bodies from the entities of Mind. Thou guidest the wise vault of heaven, and ever leadest to their pasturage the flock of stars. 20 Thou rulest, O King, the choir angelic and the company of the spirits, and Thou dost dance around perishable nature. Thou dividest the indivisible Spirit (pnewma) throughout the earth, and returnest to its fountain-head what has already been bestowed, releasing mortals from the necessity of death. Be propitious to 25 these garlands of songs to Thee, and grant the calm of life to a poet of hymns. Stay Thou the changing mouth of the channels, and dry up the destructive billows of matter. Keep disease far from my mind and limbs. Calm the fatal onslaught of passion, keep off from me the dooms of poverty and of riches alike, give 30

HYMN VII

I was the first to find the measure established in new harmonies wherewith to smite the strings of the lyre in praise of Thee, Blessed One Immortal, illustrious Offspring of the Virgin, Jesus of

10 SOlyma. Be propitious, O King, and accept my strain of sacred melody. We shall sing of the imperishable God, the great Son of God, the world-creating Son of the Father, Who hath given birth to the ages, the nature mingled of all things, the boundless wisdom, a God to heavenly beings, a curse to those of the under-

15 world. What time Thou wert poured forth on the earth, even out of a mortal womb, the inventive art of the Magus was helpless, and he wondered from the rising of the star, what manner of infant had been born, who might be this God concealed, God, or nether shade or king. Come, bring Thy gifts, offerings of myrrh, presents

20 of gold, fine perfume of frankincense. God Thou art, receive Thou the incense; I bring gold to my King, His grave will befit the myrrh. Thou hast purified the land, the waves of the sea, and the paths of the demons, the swift outflow of air, and the recesses of the infernal regions. Thou wert sent, being

25 God, to Hades, to the assistance of the dead. But be propitious, O King, and accept my strains of sacred songs.

HYMN VIII

In a somewhat Dorian cadence, I will lift up a clear song on my ivory-inlaid lyre, in Thy honour, Blessed Immortal, Offspring Illustrious of the Virgin ; and do Thou, O Ruler, save my harmless life, granting me night and day alike inaccessible to griefs. Make Thy light to shine in my heart from out Thy source of Mind. 5 Apportion to my youth the strength of sound limbs and to my actions renown ; bring Thou a brilliant year even to the joy of my old age, augmenting precious wisdom with health. And mayst Thou preserve my brother to me, whom e’en now in his youth,

O Immortal One, Thou didst bring back, when already passing on ro foot beyond the portals of this earth. Thou didst extinguish then my cares, my griefs, my tears, and the burning fire of my heart. Thou didst make even a dead body to live, O Father, for Thy 1613 Suppliant’s sake. Preserve Thou my sister, and pair of children. All the house of the sons of Hesychius' do Thou hide under Thy hand, 5 and the partner of my marriage bed, O King, keep Thou from illness and harm, united to me, of one mind with me; preserve my wife in ignorance of clandestine associates. May she maintain a holy couch, unsullied, pious, inaccessible to unlawful desires. Take Thou my soul away from evils and from piteous anguish, freed 20 from the fetters of earthly life; and grant me to raise hymns with the choirs of the holy, in honour of Thy Father, and to Thy supreme power, O Blessed One, I will chant my hymns again, I will sing a song to Thee again, and again, perchance, I shall attune this unstained lyre to Thee. 25

1 This reading was discovered by Terzaghi, and refers to the family of Hesychius, the friend to whom Letter 93 is addressed. See longer note.

HYMN IX

Most beloved august Offspring of the Virgin of Solyma, to Thee, Blessed One, I sing. Thou hast expelled the serpent of the earth, that fountain-head of treachery, from the great gardens of the Father, even the serpent who offered the abjured fruit,

s nourisher of troublous destiny, to the primal youth. To Thee I sing, Illustrious Father, that wearest the crown, Son of the Virgin of Solyma. Thou didst descend even to the earth, sojourner of a day, bearing a mortal body, and didst go down beneath to Tartarus, where death reigned over nations of souls in thousands.

1o And then shuddered at Thee the aged ancient Hades, and his hound, the devourer of man, drew back from the threshold ; and Thou, delivering choirs of nghteous souls from their woes, dost raise, with unpolluted bands, hymns to the Father. To Thee I sing, Illustrious Father that wearest the crown, Son of the Virgin of 15 Solyma. The boundless races of demons throughout the air trembled at Thy ascent, O King. The ambrosial choir of the stars immaculate was seized with awe; and ether laughing, wise father of harmony, blended upon the seven-stringed lyre a hymn of victory to Thy might. The harbinger of dawn smiled, the messenger 20 of day, and golden Hesperus, the star of Cytherea. The moon filling with a stream of fire its horned light, led the way, the shepherd of the gods of night. Titan spread out his far-flaming hair under the ineffable track, and recognized the Offspring of God, Mind, the Artificer of all that is best, and the origin of his 25 own flame. But Thou, in winged flight, didst leap over the back of the azure sky, and didst take Thy place amongst the inviolate spheres of the Mind, wherein is the fountain of good things, the heaven that is kept secret, where there is neither deep-flowing 1616 time that draggeth with untiring foot the offspring of earth, nor 30 the shameless destinies of matter’s billowy depths, but an age

392 HYMN IX

born of the far distant past, though ageless itself, old and yet

withal ever young, is to the gods the guardian of their eternal mansion.

HYMN X

O CurisT, Son of God Who reigneth above, remember Thy servant, by destiny a sinner, who writeth these words, and grant 5 me release from passions that bring death, which are implanted in me, in a sullied soul. Grant me, O Saviour Jesus, to behold Thy divine light, that appearing there I may sing a song to the Healer of souls, the Healer of bodies, together with the mighty Father and the Holy Spirit. 10

NOTES

Page 243, 1.13. .. . one of those benighted Euboeans. Dio Chrysostom alludes to the same incident in The Euboean (vii. 4, vol. i. p. 190, ed. von Arnim), ra yéveca Sy] kopawra ...otous eri “Iuov “Ounpds dnow €NOciv EvBodas, oxcirrrwy, soi Soxety, cai xatayeAdv, ort rev GAAwy ’ Axara Karis éxdvrev of 52 ef Hyicous éxdpwv.

Page 243,1.16. Which of the gods .. . did I pass overwithout accusation? Petavius quotes some verses of Petronius (c. 109) to the same purpose.

O fallax natura deum: quae prima dedisti Aetati nostrae gaudia, prima rapis.

Page 243, 1. 18. eslogistsc of Epicurus. In allusion to the doctrine of Epicurus that the gods did not trouble themselves with the affairs of mankind. Krabinger quotes from Lucretius (ii. 646 ff.) the lines:

Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse est Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur Semota ab nostris rebus seiunctaque longe.

Page 244,1. 23. as sf tn good fortune. Petavius observes that it was the custom at banquets and drinking bouts to pass jests at the expense of the bald heads present—and refers to Petronius (c. ro9),

Iam Tryphaena Gitona extrema parte potionis spargebat, cum Eumolpus, et ipse vino solutus, dicta voluit in caluos stigmososque iaculari.

Page 245, 1.4. after risingin the morning &c. In regard to this chapter, extending over about two pages, which Synesius quotes from the works of Dio Chrysostom, I have to make the following observations. No work of Dio concerning hair was known to Photius, nor has any such work been noted by any other writer of antiquity. The chapter in question, therefore, was, until the year 1839, always regarded as the introductory part of a work by Dio, of which the rest has disappeared. In that year, however, a distinguished Dutch scholar, J. Geel, the librarian of the Uni-

394 NOTES

versity of Leyden,and correspondent of the French Académie des Inscriptions, who had been making a close study of the document in question, published a letter on the subject, addressed to M. Hase, Conservateur au Département des Manuscrits, at the Bibliothéque du Roi, Paris. In this letter, which is full of very close and acute argument, he attempts to establish, and it would seem with great success, the thesis that he sets out to demonstrate, namely, that the two pages quoted here from Dio are not a fragment of the lost essay, but the whole essay. ‘For my part’, he says, ‘I have come to the conclusion that Synesius in saying at the beginning of his discourse that a work had been produced, called a Eulogy on Hair, by Dio of the tongue of gold, has fabricated a title that Dio himself had never thought of. This Eulogy of Hair, which he pretends to offer us, is only an exercise in style, a study, one such as I could point out in other of this author’s writings, as for example, the nineteenth discourse, introduced in the same way by an account of some event, and as little polished as the so-called “Eulogy”’. The same thing may be said of the fifty-second discourse, one of the most interesting bits in the collection of his works. They are nothing, all of them, but thoughts jotted down on paper at the moment. At the same time, I call your attention to the extraordinary resemblance between the commencement of this fifty-second discourse, and that of the “Eulogy of Hair”... . If the Eulogy did not bear the marks of Dio’s style even in its smallest details, one would be tempted to suspect Synesius of bad faith, and to imagine that he had forged an imitation in order to fight with a shadow’ (Leyde, Hazenberg, 1839). There is not room here to go through all the points of this very interesting work of Geel’s, which I recommend to any one desirous to form a definite opinion on the question. The text is printed, with the readings of a Florence manuscript of Synesius, in von Arnim’s edition of Dio (vol. ii [Berol. 1896], pp. 313-19).

Another interesting discovery in regard to this essay of Synesius was made a little later. A French savant, E. Miller, published in Paris in the year 1840 a Greek text entitled, ‘Eloge de la Chevelure, discours inédit d’un auteur grec anonyme en réfutation du discours de Synésius intitulé, Eloge de la Calvitie, publié d’aprés un manuscrit grec, &c.’ It seems that M. Miller came across this work of an anonymous Greek

author in the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris, where for some extraordinary reason it had escaped the notice of other scholars. ‘The writer whose work I publish to-day,’ says Miller in his Introduction, “has struck a blow at Synesius’ reputation. . . . It is still more extraordinary that this work has remained unnoticed until now, when we observe that it is mentioned in the Greek catalogue (Art. 21, no. 2953) with this notice, Anonymus de Encomtio Caluitss quod a Synesio scriptum est. This title arrested my attention. .. . I commenced reading it at once .. . and finally decided to publish it with a commentary. I had hoped that the work itself would furnish me with indications that might be sufficient to decide its authorship. It is certainly remarkable in many ways, but in this particular I was disappointed. Not only does the author say nothing to throw any light on the question of authorship, but he cites no poet of antiquity except Homer and Hesiod.’ Miller means no doubt by this that we cannot assign a date to him through the authors that he quotes; I have pointed out elsewhere that there would be a similar difficulty in the case of Synesius, if we were otherwise unaware of the exact time in which he lived. ‘Nevertheless,’ Miller continues, ‘there was abundance of opportunity for quotations, and he could easily have brought upon the scene many poets of antiquity. He contents himself, however, as a philosopher with combating Synesius single-handed. In spite of this excessive dearth of sources of information, I do not wish to leave the discussion of this point of literary criticism without seeming to have arrived at some sort of solution. I have therefore endeavoured to fix approximately the period in which this champion of Dio must have written his essay, and after a conscientious examination of his style, I have sought to indicate to what class of writers he belonged.’ While admitting that a decision upon this point must be more or less conjectural, Miller goes on to point out that certain Greek writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did succeed to a certain extent in rehabilitating their style in Greek by a close study of the authors of the golden age. The anonymous work that he is criticizing he describes as showing considerable purity of Attic style, an achievement which would have been quite within the compass of such men as Demetrius Cydonius, Bessarion, or Gemistus Plethon. And this alone is sufficient to make one hesitate. 2878.2 X

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From a palaeographical point of view the manuscript in question cannot, he says, be more modern than the end of the thirteenth century, or the beginning of the fourteenth. This seems to make it impossible, therefore, to attribute it to such fourteenth- or fifteenth-century writers as those just named. After weighing all possibilities, therefore, the happy discoverer of the manuscript has come to the conclusion that its author, if he were not a contemporary of Synesius, which is quite possible, must have lived in some part of the two centuries following. I shall have occasion to refer to this anonymous work in the course of my notes on this essay of Synesius. It is interesting to observe that the writer of the pamphlet directed against Synesius does not seem at all to have appreciated the irony and wit of the author he is criticizing. He shows a tendency to take everything that Synesius says quite seriously and literally, and answers him in like manner, training all the heavy artillery of a philosopher upon him. He never seems to suspect that the essay of Synesius is really a skit upon precisely such pompous people as himself, in other words, the sophists of his time. Muller describes his author as a philosopher, but I should be more inclined to class him as a sophist, who was trying to show his ingenuity at the expense of Synesius, just as Synesius was trying to show his, although in a much lighter and more jocose spirit, at the expense of Dio, whom, notwithstanding, he admired so much. ‘Are you not ashamed, Synesius,’ says the anonymous author, ‘unless it is purely on account of your own baldness that you are speaking, are you not ashamed, I say, to write an encomium upon the work of a disease, and to leave out of consideration the praise of what is becoming and healthy?’

He begins his essay, however, with an allusion to his own hair, as follows (p. 27), xai pry Oep eri T@ Tob Aiwvos énendvOer Acyw Lvvéovos, tor’ abros eri T@ tod Luveciou avrixpus’ Kat olov oSros Sucyepatvwv, ore pr) éxdpa, Adyov éefjveyxe, towtrov 5) Kai avros Ore py yeyévnpas gfadaxpos ...

Page 245,1.12. those who make a cultof their hair. Athenaeus (Detpnosoph, Lib. XII, cap. 30), in speaking of the people of Samos, says that according to the poet Asius they used to comb their hair over the back of their heads and down their shoulders,

a > » a @ o rd ot S’avrws dotrecxov Orws mAoKdpous Krevicawro ets “Hpas rénevos, rreruxacpévos etace Kadois,

xatras 5° jwpeivr’ dvéuw xpvodos evi Seopois. Again (sbsd., cap. 31), he quotes some lines from Phylarchus showing a tendency to regard the care of the hair as an effeminate and degenerate phase of morals, which the Colophonians learned of the Lydians,

aBpoovvas S¢ pabdovres avwdeAdas rapa Avid

Tecav eis ayopiy ... xairjow ayadopev” evrrperdéecow.

Speaking of the Athenians (Lib. x11. 5) he alludes to their cult of hair, KopupBous 8° avadovpevor rHv tptxdv ypuoods rérruyas epi To pérwrov Kai Tas Koppas éepdpouv.

It may be inferred from a passage in the Knights of Aristophanes that the attention to hair was a mark of aristocratic tradition amongst the Athenians (Eq. 578) :

Xop. .. . ovK atrotper ovdev srAxv rocovrovi povov' qv ToT eipnvn yevnras Kal Trovwy travowpeia, pt) POovetO” Hpiv nopdor pnd’ ameorrAeyyropevars.

Page 246,1.4. he pratses them all for thesy hasy. Dio in another of his works (Orat. XXXVI, 17, vol. ii, p. 5, ed. von Arnim) praises the wearing of long hair as a distinctly Greek trait and opposed to the Roman fashion. Speaking of a Greek city on the borders of Thrace, and the manners of the citizens, he observes: wdvv ody dv ris Hobn rH oer Pirdoodos avip, ort drravres Hoay Tov apxatov Tporrov, ws drow “Opnpos rovs “EAAnvas, xopmv- Tes Kal Ta yévera adexdres, els 5¢ ev avdrois povos e€upnpeévos, Kai TotTov édoSdpouv re Kai €uicovy amavres. €Adyero 5é ovK dAAws roto emirndevery, GMa Kodaxedwy ‘Pwpatous cal rHv mpos adrovs diAlav emiderevvpevos.

Page 248, 1. 6. I shall never disgrace my ancestral rusticity. It isa favourite idea with Synesius that he is exempt from all the refinements and overculture of town life, that his is a blunt and rustic type of mind, &c. Cf. The Egyptsan Tale (I,cap. 18). ‘Now it happened that there was

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one man, who, though of serious bent, had through philosophy been brought up in a more rustic mould, &c.’ See also his letter to Olympius (Ep. 148), in which he takes to himself great credit for his devotion to the simple life of the country, and his contempt for the ways of men of the city. Cf. also Hymn IIT, 54: ‘...land of the Notus which no godless blast of wind sullieth, nor is the foot-print graven thereon of men whose cares are of the town.’

Page 252, 1.30. no fruit ona plant &c. The anonymouswriter uses the simile of plants also, in his encomium on hair (p. 53): Etot yap ai rpixes, ws Epnuev, nedparjs hurd, aicbjoewy dvbn, répyis Eurspuxos, xdpts Euduros, xaAAos favopevov Kai tas des evOds Onpwpevov, fv mdvres emjvecayv Kai Aoyoypado. Kai trownrai, Kai 6 ToUTwy mpoiordpevos “Opnpos. dadaxpov dé ris TOLnTay 7} pytépwy péypt cov Koopjoa Adyo.s mpoetiiero ;

Page 253, 1. 14. ... those who serve the dsuinity in Egypt do not endure haw etc. Cf. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, p. 352.C,D: ‘... few there be who know the cause of this ceremony . . . why the priests of Isis shave their heads, and wear no hair upon them... . There is one cause alone, that as Plato (= Phaedo 678) says, it is not lawful for the pure to touch what is impure. Nowit is well known that all superfluities of our food are impure, and of such is hair engendered.’ Philo (De Csrcumctstone 1, § 5) compares the shaving of the Egyptian priests to the Jewish practice as follows: ‘It [circumcision] secures the healthiness of the whole body in a way that is suited to the people consecrated to God; with which object the Egyptian priests, being extravagant in their case, shaved the whole of their bodies. ’

Page 253, 1. 29. What could be balder than a sphere? Cf. Proclus on the Parmenides of Plato (Lib. vi, pp. 106-15, ed. Cousin): ‘And on this account Parmenides speculating in his poem on Being in very truth, brings in the sphere also as well as the Whole, the Same, and the Other; for he describes it [Being] as like a spherical mass everywhere equidistant from a centre with all its parts, and immovable; in such sort that all things are first in mind, and secondly are as images in the monad and in every perceptible thing, physically in this, but mathematically in that. For the sphere is an intellectual concept as is Mind, and the monad; this cosmos is the perceptible sphere carrying

in itself the images of eternal gods.’ Cf.alsoOlympiodorus(In. Plat. Phaed. D. c. pif’, p. 235, ed. Norvin.): “Ore opatpixov ro mav Seiferev dv Tis amd ris reducis aitias. pupetras yap 7) opaipa 70 éy, ort pddora, Kpdriwrov otcoa Tay oynpdtwv Kai adudAvroy, ws yovusy aanMaypévn, nai padora mdvrwv xwpnruch dia rH avriy airiay. ért dro Tis rapaderyparuchs, ors ravTeAes Td {Gov eis 6 BAdrwy 6 Beds eSnptovpye: Wore reXesraTov oxnpdrwy 7) odaipa. én, amo Tis Towmntuchs airlas’ aidiov yap adro Kai adidAvrov 6 Snusoupyos Trovet TOGOTo S¢ oxHpUA 6 TE KUKAOS Kai 7) ofaitpa.

Page 254, 1. 8. Wherefore the entsre-soul animates the whole cosmos, which ss a sphere. This is the view that dominates Plato’s Timaeus ; but the sphere became a sad stumbling-block in later Greek philosophy, owing to the perpetual confusion of astronomical and psychological images. It will be remembered how in the Republic Socrates reproves the young and enthusiastic Glaucon for suggesting that astronomy is an elevating pursuit because in studying the stars one gazes upwards. But Plato in the Timaeus, as Taylor points out (Plato, The Man and hts Work, p. 447), ‘never speaks of spheres, but in the language originated by Anaximander of circles.’ The later theory of Eudoxus of the revolving spheres of the universe was unknown to him. For Anstotle’s view of Eudoxus’ system, see Metaphysics, 1073>. Evdofos pev odv HXlov Kai ceArjvns Exarépov TH fopay €v tpiow érifer’ elvar ofaipas, wv THY péev mMpwrnv THY Tav arAavav dorpwy elvas, rnv 5€ Seurdpay xara tov dia. péeowy trav Cwdiwy, ryv 5 rpirny Kata Tov Aedofwdvoyv ev TO trAdTE Tov Cwdiwy .... Tav Sé TrAavwWpEevwY dorpwy ev rérrapow éxaorov ofaipas. .. . Kaddmrmos 5¢ rhy perv Odow trav ofpaipay tiv avriy éeribero Evdcfw, robr’ €ort trav aroornpdrwv Thy rdw, 7d 5¢ 2ARGos TH ev rob Aws Kai r@ rob Kpodvov ro aro éxeivw amedidov, t@ 8’ nrlov Kai t@ ceAjvns Sv0 wero Ere mpooberdas elvar odaipas . . .. dvayxaiov Sé, et wéAAovor cuvrePeioat Maca 7a pavdpeva anodwoew, xa” Exacrov Tay tAavwydvwy érépas ofaipas pid éAdrrovas elvas tas aveActrovoas...

In the scholia to this passage (Bekker, vol. iv, p. 807) is the following: tobro einwy evOvs ioropet ad te Evdofos repi trav ofaipdiv éXeye Kai Tob mrAnGous adray nai KaAXrnos. nai Se€dpevos THv tpocOixny trav opaipav, nv 6 Kddurrros rrpocdbynxev (6 yap Evdofos etxoot nai €€ ras wdoas ériBero,

400 NOTES KaNursos 5¢ rpudxovra Kai tpeis) otrws avros rais rpidxovta Kai rpiolv das eixoor kai Svo0 mpooriPnar ... «.7.A.

A long discussion follows as to the number of the ‘spheres’ necessary to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies. Synesius was an astronomer, as we see from the famous Leter to Paconsus, and the science, as he tells us in the letter in question, had made great strides. He reminds us that Hipparchus in his day was prophetic, and that his vague anticipations were fulfilled by the work of Ptolemy and ‘the divine band of his successors.’ ‘Every allowance must be made’, he adds, ‘for these men, inasmuch as the more important problems were still unsolved, and geometry was still at the nursing stage.’ It would be very interesting to know what these ‘important problems’ were. But the exact history of astronomy in the time that elapsed between Ptolemy and Synesius is lost in obscurity. We naturally scan the allusions in Synesius here and elsewhere, but find nothing to tell us whether the conceptions of Eudoxus as to the plurality of spheres in the universe was still accepted in the fourth century. In the meantime, at all events, astrology had come in to occupy a large place in the popular imagination, though of this we hear little in Synesius. But throughout all his wit and playfulness about the sphere we can easily detect the same underlying conception that we find in the passage from Proclus quoted above, namely that the sphere, being the most perfect form, is the expression of Mind, in other words the second hypostasis of the Neoplatonists, but it is worthy of observation that Synesius never endorses in so many words the doctrine of the Neoplatonic hypostases. For him the sphere is the most perfect form, and therefore the idea of the sphere must dominate the cosmos. Beyond that he does not go. He remains with the Platonic doctrine of the idea. In this respect he is pre-Aristotelian, notwithstanding the fact that he has, as I have tried to show, so frequently drawn on the works of Aristotle.

Page 256, 1. 8. chests, whsch conceal .. . those spheres. The priests of Egypt were reputed to be astronomers. It would seem probable, therefore, that the spheres to which Synesius alludes were models of the celestial bodies, or at all events had some connexion with astronomy. As to his statement about the priests mocking the populace, it was

affirmed by Pseudo-Lucian that the Egyptians divided the heavens into twelve areas, and symbolized each of these by a different animal, and that it was from these symbols that the figures of gods were derived: éx yap 51) rod raves jépos, Kai dordépwy Trav GAwy arAavéwy te Kai edorabdwy Kai ovdaud Kiweopdvewy Suddexa poipas érdpovro ev Tots Kweopévowt, Kal otxeta [ia ddvra Exacrov avriv és GAAnY popdiy peupéaras Ta pev evdda, ta 8¢ avOpumwyv, ta 5¢ Onpav, ra Se rrnvdv, ra 5€ wrnvédwy. (De Astrologta, vi.)

It was maintained by certain materialist philosophers in the days of Porphyry that the Egyptian priests worshipped the stars and heavenly bodies generally, if we can draw such an inference from the letter which he writes to the Egyptian priest Anebo. This letter is quoted by Cudworth, vol. i, p. 537, in the following passage: Xa:pijuwy pev ydp, Kai ot Got, ovd’ do 71 1p0 THy cpwpdvwy Kdopwy yyobvrat, ev apyf Adywy rHepevo Tovs Aiyurriwy, ovS’ GAAous Beovs wAnv trav mAaynrav Aeyopévwv, Kai Ta&v cupmAnpovyrwy Tov Cwdiaxov, etc. (Euseb., Praep. Evang., ii. 4). The full text is printed in Thomas Gale’s edition of Iamblichus, De Mystertts. Porphyry, it would seem, rebukes the Egyptian priests for worshipping material powers instead of spiritual. This is also the view that Sallustius, the friend of the Emperor Julian, takes of them, writing in the middle of the fourth century, although he accuses them of identifying their gods, not with the stars, but with other elements of nature. ‘The worst explanation, the material,’ he says, in regard to the stories of the gods, ‘is that which the Egyptians because of their ignorance used most; they regarded and described material things as gods, earth as Isis, moisture as Osiris, heat as Typhon,’ &c. (Nock’s translation of Sallustius, p. 7, cap. 4 of the text). bAm«ds S¢ ears Kai €oyaros, d pddvora Aiydrrvo 8.” arradevoiay €xypjcavto, adra Ta owpara Beovs vopicavres Kai xaddoavres [Kat] "Low pev rv viv, “Oorpw S€ ro bypov, Tédwva S¢ rhv Oeppornra KrA.

The worship of animals by the masses in Egypt is mentioned with reprobation by Plutarch in his Jsts and Ostrts (p.379E: Alyurriwv 8é ot troAAot Geparrevovres avira 7a (Ga, Kai 7repiezrovres ws Deovs, ov yéAwros pdvov ovde yAevacpot KatarenAyjKact Tas tepoupyias (aAAa Totro ris aBeATEpias eAdyvorov €ort xaxdv): Sd€a 5° eudverar Sew, rods pev dobevets Kai dxdxous eis dxparov wirepeirrovea, Thy SevarSaipoviav, rots Se Spivrépors Kai Opacure-

402 NOTES pots ets aBéous exrimrovoa Kai Onpudders Aoyvopovs: # Kal sept rovTww 7a eixdra SueAPety ovx dvdppoordy ott.)

The above description of the Egyptians in general as ignorant and grossly superstitious is rather in accord with what Synesius says here, speaking of them as a people who were hoodwinked by their priests. It is always of the priests that he speaks when he is extolling the wisdom of the Egyptians. We must not forget that he expresses himself frequently in favour of not enlightening the masses as to the mysteries of religion. In letter 105, notably when on the brink of accepting the bishopric, he writes: ‘Thephilosophic mind . . . admits the employment of falsehood. ...I consider that the false may be beneficial to the populace, and the truth injurious. . . . I can take over the holy office on condition that I may prosecute philosophy at home, and spread legends abroad... . Divine truth should remain hidden: the vulgar need a different system.’ Is it possible that Synesius’ views on these matters were influenced by his admiration for the Egyptian priests? The tradition amongst Greek philosophers is as old as the time of Plato, who ts always endorsing their wisdom, without, however, throwing much light on their theology. Plutarch, on the other hand, gives us so many explanations of the origin and interpretation of the myths of their religion, that we are forced to conclude that in his time either the priests themselves had become very ignorant about their own doctrines, or saw fit to throw dust in the eyes of inquiring Greeks. We find elsewhere in Synesius allusion to the fact that they were not able to interpret their own hieroglyphics (De Prov., p. 1256 c). Plutarch, in Jsts and Ostris, c. 72 ff., tells us that some men account for the heads of animals in the images of gods as coming from military standards or ensigns, carried into battle in the past, and each sacred to some single tribe, which afterwards endowed its protecting deity with the emblem, and that others say that they were used in war as portentous signs to terrify the enemy with; or again, that they were the areas marked out by the priests, in the celestial vault, and referred to the astral nature of their gods, as does Porphyry in the letter quoted above.

Diogenes Laertius speaks of the philosophy of the Egyptians in the following terms (i. 10): “They say that matter was the first principle, next the four elements were derived from matter, and thus living things

of every species were produced. The sun and the moon are gods bearing the names of Osiris and Isis respectively: they make use of the beetle, the dragon, the hawk, and other creatures as symbols of divinity, according to Manetho.. . and Hecataeus. . . . They also set up statues and temples to these sacred animals because they do not know the true form of the deity. They hold that the universe is created and perishable and that it is spherical in shape. They say that the stars consist of fire, and that, according as the fire in them is mixed, so events happen upon earth ; that the moon is eclipsed when it falls into the earth’s shadow ; that the soul survives death and passes into other bodies; that rain is caused by change in the atmosphere ; of all other phenomena they give physical explanations. . . . They also laid down laws on the subject of justice, which they ascribed to Hermes; and they deified those animals which are serviceable to men.’ (Diog. Laer., translation R. D. Hicks, Loeb Library.) It must be remembered that Diogenes Laertius was writing probably in the early part of the third century, and was nearer to the time of Synesius than was Plutarch.

Page 256, 1. 10 . the Egyptians ...do not allow the vulgar .. . to make images. The following two passages from St. Clement of Alexandria and from Plutarch in regard to the Egyptian priests, are quoted by Cudworth (vol. i, p. 532). I append the Greek text:

ot Aiydirriot od Tots émuruxobor Ta rapa odpiow daveriPevro puvorypia, ovde piv BeBiirors Thy rav Oeiwv etdnow efépepov, add’ 7} udvots ye Tots pédAAovow énl riv Baorelay mporévar, Kal rébv iepéwy Tots xpBetow elvar Soxypwrdtous, amd Te Tis Tpophs Kal ris 1asdelas Kai rob yévous (Strom. v, p. 503).

‘O ek paxipwr arodederypévos ebds eydvero rdaiv iepdwv, nai pereixe Tis dirooodgias, émxexpuppérns ta toa pos Kai Adyos, dpvdpas euddoes Tis dAnfelas nat Siaddoes exovow, worep ayéder Kai rrapady- Aobow adroit mpd Tay lepGv ras odiyyas emends lordvres, ds ainyparddy ooglay ris Jeodoyias abrav é€xovons (Plutarch, Isis e Ostrts, c. 9).

Page 256, 1. 16. amongst the Greeks zeal for truth is languid. Synesius does not seem to see that the aspersions made by Thucydides on the lack of any critical examination into legendary history in his

2878.3 Y

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time refer rather to the majority of mankind in general than to the Greek race in particular. In the passage to which Synesius alludes he says that most men are averse to taking pains in the quest of accurate information, adducing erroneous accounts generally accepted by his countrymen, and the rest of the Greeks (of dAAo. “EAAnves) concerning contemporary as well as historic facts. The last words of this criticism of human credulity (Thuc. i. 20) are the following: ovrws adraXainwpos rois moAdois 4 Cntnas THs aAnOeias Kai émi ra €rotwa paAAov rpérovrat.

Page 260, 1. 18. forces of Cambyses. The passages that Synesius is thinking of may be found in Herodotus, Bk. III, chap. 12: ‘I saw there a strange thing, of which the people of the country had told me. The bones of those slain on either side in this fight lying scattered separately (for the Persian bones lay in one place and the Egyptian in another, where the armies had first separately stood), the skulls of the Persians are so brittle that if you throw no more than a pebble it will pierce them, but the Egyptian skulls are so strong that the blow of a stone will hardly break them. And this, people said (which for my own part I readily believed), is the reason of it: the Egyptians shave their heads from childhood and the bone thickens by exposure to the sun. This also is the reason why they do not grow bald; for nowhere can one see so few bald heads as tn Egypt. Their skulls then are strong for this reason ; and the cause of the Persian skulls being weak is that they shelter their heads through their lives with the felt hats (called tiaras) which they wear. Such is the truth of this matter. I saw too the skulls of those Persians at Papremis who were slain with Darius’s son Achaemenes by Inaros the Libyan, and they were like the others’ (trans. Godley, ed. Loeb). Wilkinson, in a note to Rawlinson’s Herodotus (ad loc.), observes, ‘The thickness of the Egyptian skull is observable in the mummies ;’ Druon remarks that in quoting this passage of Herodotus, Synesius has taken pains to exclude the clause in which Herodotus says that one sees fewer bald men in Egypt than anywhere else, and that it is obvious from this that all his argument is to be taken as a pure “jeu d'esprit,’ and a sophist’s piece of practice.

Page 261, 1.12. strike one of these men with ts fist: see Mayor on Juvenal, 5. 171 (also on p. 436), for many parallels.

Page 262, 1. 4. should the demon be adverse. He probably alludes to that individual demon mentioned in Horace’s Epistle to Julius Florus (Ep. II, 2, 187)

Scit Genius, natale comes qui temperat astrum, naturae deus humanae, mortalis...

Page 262, 1. 5. one of the divine race. No doubt his Lacedaemonian ancestors are alluded to here.

Page 262, 1.16. The Lacedaemonsans adopted long hair after Thyrea. Here again Synesius has been taking a leaf out of Herodotus; the allusion will be found in Bk. I, cap. 82, where he is describing how when Croesus was besieged by Cyrus, he sent to the Lacedaemonians for help, as well as to the rest of the allies. ‘Now at this very time the Spartans themselves had a feud on hand with the Argives in respect of the country called Thyrea; ... the Argives came out to save their territory from being cut off; then after debate the two armies agreed that three hundred of each side should fight, and whichever party won should possess the land. The rest of each army was to go away to its own country.... Having thus agreed, the armies drew off, and picked men of each side were left and fought. Neither could gain advantage in the battle; at last of six hundred there were left only three, Alcenor and Chromios of the Argives, Othryades of the Lacedaemonians: these three were left alive at nightfall. Then the two Argives, deeming themselves victors, ran to Argos; but Othryades, the Lacedaemonian, spoiled the Argive dead, bore the armour to his own armies’ camp, and remained in his place. On the next day both armies came to learn the issue; for awhile both claimed the victory. .. . At last the dispute so ended that they joined battle and fought ; many of both sides fell but the Lacedaemonians had the victory. Ever after this the Argives, who before had worn their hair long by fixed custom, shaved their heads, and made a law, with a curse added thereto, that no Argive should grow his hair, and no Argive woman should wear gold, till they should recover Thyrea; and the Lacedaemonians made a contrary law, that ever after they should wear their hair long ; for till now they had not so worn it ’ (trans. Godley, ed. Loeb).

Page 263, 1.12. dressed their hatr before the battle of Thermopylae. We must go back to Herodotus again, Bk. VII, chap. 208 seq.: ‘ While this

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debate was going on, Xerxes sent a mounted spy to observe the Greeks, and note how many they were, and see what they were doing. . . .The horseman rode up to the camp and looked about him .. .. It chanced that at this time the Lacedaemonians held the outer guard, and were seen by the spy, some of them engaged in gymnastic exercises, others combing their long hair. At this the spy greatly marvelled, but he counted their number, and ... he returned and told Xerxes all that he had seen. Xerxes apparently thought it a laughable matter that they should be engaged in such employments as looking after their hair, but Demaratus, whom he consulted on the subject, assured him that it was the custom of the Spartans when they were about to hazard their lives, to adorn their heads with care.’ Rawlinson, whose translation I have just been quoting, observes that ‘the particular attention bestowed on the adornment of the hair in times of imminent danger, is witnessed to by Plutarch (Lycurgus, chap. 22), and by Xenophon (Lacedaemonsan Republic, xiii. 8) if we adopt in that place the reading xexrenopévy.’ The passage from Plutarch is as follows: ‘In time of war, too, they relaxed the severity of the young men’s discipline, and permitted them to beautify their hair and omament their arms and clothing, rejoicing to see them, like horses, prance and neigh for the contest. Therefore they wore their hair long as soon as they ceased to be youths, and particularly in times of danger they took pains to have it glossy and wellcombed, remembering a certain saying of Lycurgus, that a fine head of hair made the handsome more comely still, and the ugly more terrible.’ (Trans. Perrin, Loeb Library, vol. i, p. 275.)

Page 264, 1.2. Ptolemy, son of Lagus. Arrian explains in his preface to his Ltfe of Alexander, that since Ptolemy, son of Lagos, and Aristoboulos had both written concerning his campaigns, he himself has adopted the course of accepting for his work all statements in which these two writers agreed, and in case they disagreed of adopting the more plausible version of the two. He further states that they both seem to him the more trustworthy inasmuch as they both accompanied Alexander on his campaigns, and as to Ptolemy, he of all men was the least likely to falsify the truth, for deception is more disgraceful in a king than in any other man. From this phrase it may be inferred

that Synesius had Arrian’s work in his mind when he wrote this passage. Certainly he would have agreed with Arrian. Compare his remark in the address to the Emperor Arcadius, ‘Truth is the aristocracy of language.’ The passage which he refers to here, or possibly quotes in places, is not in the few fragments we possess of Ptolemy, whom, however, Arrian frequently refers to. Ptolemy seems to have enjoyed the reputation of telling amusing anecdotes. If the one that he recounts of the dragons with human voices who conducted Alexander’s army to Ammon be taken as an example of his critical powers as an historian, the amusing war episode that Synesius tells us here will find little credence. There is, perhaps, a vein of irony in the manner in which he observes that Ptolemy must be truthful because he is a king. It reminds us of the passage in Letter 44, where he says: ‘This is the story which Rumour has recounted, and it is not ordained that a divinity should lie.’

Page 266, 1.7. Aristoxenus says. This must refer to Aristoxenus of Tarentum, a pupil of Aristotle, and a contemporary of Theophrastus. He wrote four hundred and fifty-three works, according to Suidas, and was greatly admired in the succeeding centuries. In the days of Plutarch he was considered already as a classic. The work cited here must be his celebrated Lives of Men in which he wrote of Pythagoras, Archytas, Socrates, and Plato. His description of the irascible side of Socrates is certainly not confirmed by the works of Xenophon and Plato.

Page 267, 1. 30. he... defames Hector. Druon refers us to Philostratus, the Herotcus, where Hector is represented as a bald man (iii. 21, xiv. I) per’ oddSepids Kopns.

Page 268, 1. 14. let anyone show me where this occurs in . . . Homer. Synesius is quite wrong here. As Druon points out, the verse in question occurs in the twenty-second book of the Ji:ad, lines 401-2, but the reading that Synesius quotes is a bad one, he having substituted the word mwedopnvro for the word zirvavro.

Page 268, 1.18. as tf Phileas had accused Andoctdes. The same phrase appears in Suidas, who must have taken it from this passage in Synesius. Druon thinks that the Andocides in question here is the orator.

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Page 270,1].28. The adulterers... come frommenwho care for thetr hatr. Seneca in one of his diatribes (De Brevitate Vitae, xii. 3) asks ironically, “Who is not more sedulous about the adornment of his head than about its safety,’ and desires to know which one of the idlers in Rome would not rather the whole state be thrown into confusion than his own hair. The passage is interesting as showing what a cult of hair existed among men in the first century.

‘Quid? Illos otiosos vocas quibus apud tonsorem multae horae transmittuntur, dum decerpitur, si quid proxima nocte succrevit, dum de singulis capillis in consilium itur, dum aut disiecta coma restituitur aut deficiens hinc atque illinc in frontem compellitur? Quomodo irascuntur, si tonsor paulo neglegentior fuit, tanquam virum tonderet! Quomodo excandescunt si quid ex iuba sua decisum est, si quid extra ordinem iacuit, nisi omnia in anulos suos reciderunt! Quis est istorum qui non malit rem publicam turbari quam comam suam? qui non sollicitior sit de capitis sui decore quam de salute? ...’

Page 271, 1. 24. like Cletsthenes, the Timarchs, . . . dispose of thetr beauty. These men were selected, no doubt, as examples of evil and perverse morals from the fact that they played a conspicuous part, at least the latter, in political life. Timarchus was a rich man, and a supporter of Demosthenes. When Aeschines and Demosthenes returned from the celebrated embassy to Philip of Macedon in which they were colleagues, Demosthenes brought a formal charge of treason against Aeschines. The latter, in order to disconcert his adversary, brought an indictment against his friend and supporter, on the ground that he had committed criminal offences by his debased conduct, according to the laws of Athens which made certain offences penal. Aeschines won his case against Timarchus, in the celebrated speech which bears his name, and succeeded thereby in getting his enemy out of the way, and in making the task of Demosthenes more difficult. Demosthenes, however, won his case against Aeschines in the end, and the latter retired from public life. Both these men became the butt of the comic poets. Aristophanes in the Clouds (346 ff.) has the following witty dialogue:

Socrates. Have you ever seen a Cloud like a centaur or a pard, or wolf, or bull?

Strepstades. Marry, I have, but what of that?

Socr. Learn that the Clouds assume whatever guise likes them best. Therefore if they chance to see a long-haired fop—one of those hirsute ‘slips of wildness’ such as the son of Xenophantus, in mockery of his lunes, they translate themselves into centaurs. .. . And just now catching sight of Cleisthenes (pointing to a member of the audience), —do you observe ?—they took the guise of women.

Streps. (ecstatically prostrating himself before the Chorus) All hail to ye, then, Liege Ladies! : . . (Mitchell’s translation).

Page 272, 1. 4. Pherecydes. Diogenes Laertius tells us about this philosopher (Bk. I, 116-20), who was a pupil of Pittacus. The allusion here is to the story ‘that he died of a verminous disease, and that Pythagoras, who was present, came to see him and inquire how he was. Pherecydes would not let him come in, however, but thrust his finger through the doorway, and exclaimed, “ My skin tells its own tale,” a phrase, says Diogenes, subsequently applied by the grammarians as equivalent to “getting worse’’, although some wrongly understand it to mean “all is going well’’.. . . Duris, in the second book of his Horae, gives the inscription on his tomb as follows:

All knowledge that a man may have had I; Yet tell Pythagoras, were more thereby, That first of Greeks is he; I speak no lie.’

(Diog. Laert., trans. Hicks, Loeb Library, vol. i, p. 125).